


Things that glide in the night

by tabbycat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dementors, Hogwarts Third Year, Honestly this is mainly just dementors, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21718870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabbycat/pseuds/tabbycat
Summary: The Dementor finds him again. It always does. Remus feels it before he sees it.“You’re not my friend,” he tells it.The Dementor does nothing, says nothing. Remus expected nothing less, because what else would happen? He’s approaching as mad as Sirius Black, if he thinks he’ll get a reply from a loosely held together mass of soul and despair.1993. Remus Lupin has enough ghosts and spectres following him around the castle, without a Dementor following him as well.James. Lily. Peter. Black has escaped from Azkaban, and shouldn’t Remus say something about that? And the other Black. Regulus.It isn’t any surprise the Dementor is interested in him.
Relationships: Regulus Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 152





	1. Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> This is fully written, clocking in at around 28k if I don’t tweak it any more, essentially canon compliant musing about Dementors.

The Dementor is following him.

It’s a bright, crisp autumn morning, a Saturday two weeks into term, and Remus Lupin has nothing he needs to be doing in the castle. No homework - to mark, not complete - and all of his lessons are set into October, and he’s not needed for detention - again, to oversee, not complete - or any other duties. Snape has glared at him eighteen times already this morning, and Remus isn’t sticking around to hear any of the barbed comments that he knows will come with the glares. Minerva and Poppy are both busy, and they’re the only ones in the castle that seem to have much time for him.

And he can’t be in the castle alone.

Hogsmeade alone seems the least worst of the options. It might be cold and windy and lonely, but the Three Broomsticks is warm. It’s not the castle. The castle has ghosts.

It still feels like there’s a ghost, or three ghosts and a spectre, if he’s honest, following him down the winding path between the castle and the village. James once fell out that tree, over there, trying to impress Lily. Peter once set it on fire, trying to prove he knew a NEWT level spell, when they’d been thirteen. Remus himself had had his first kiss by it.

No, he isn’t going to think about him. Four ghosts and a spectre and a Dementor, following him down the path. He feels it, the coldness in the air seeping down into his bones. 

“Expecto Patronum,” he says, after checking the area around him for anyone who might see. He releases his Patronus as a swathe of mist, just to be sure, just so nobody can say they saw a wolf spring from his wand. The Dementor stops. The Patronus hovers next to it. All it does is stop the Dementor moving forwards, it isn’t strong enough to make it back away. He’d need the corporal one for that. Remus checks the area again, which is empty, but seems too much to cast the wolf. The Dementot isn’t doing anything but lurking, black cape fluttering, ominous and silent and almost harmless for now.

Remus turns and stalks off, back on his way down the hill, as if just walking briskly can help him escape.

“Sod off,” he says, because the Dementor is still following. He waves his wand. 

“ _Expecto Patronum!_ ” 

Telling a Dementor to sod off will obviously achieve nothing. It goes this time, slowly retreating up to the castle once more, and, for a moment, Remus feels a stab of regret. He should have left it with him. The students don’t deserve the slow demise of happiness around the castle.

“Bloody Fudge,” he says, because blaming Cornelius Fudge is easier than examining the rest of the situation to ascertain blame.

—

It’s September of a different year, and Remus Lupin is traipsing the same path from the castle to Hogsmeade. He isn’t supposed to be here. His homework isn’t done, he’s got two detentions already this term, and he’s supposed to be a Prefect. He’s supposed to uphold the rules, and the rules state you aren’t allowed to just abscond from the castle whenever you like. He isn’t a very good Prefect. He just almost killed someone, and even though that isn’t explicitly in any Prefect rulebook as something you shouldn’t do, it’s heavily implied.

“I know where you’re going.”

Remus pulls out his wand on instinct at the sight of a green and silver scarf. 

“No need for that, thank you.”

Remus twirls the wand, a trick James taught him. “Plenty of need for that.” He glares the boy down. “It’s usually your lot who hexes first.”

“And it is usually your lot, as you put it, who cannot understand the rules of English grammar.” 

Regulus Black is an insufferable snob, and, if it wasn’t for everything else, Remus would hex him with one of Peter’s more painful finds from the library and run for it. Instead, he comes out with a litany of insults in Welsh, to prove that English grammar is a load of Hippogriff shit, and it’s ridiculous to assume it’s the be all and end all. By the look on the other boy’s face, that isn’t the point he takes from Remus’ insults.

“Which language is that?”

“Cymraeg.”

“I see. You’re being obtuse.”

“I see that you’re being a dickhead,” Remus snaps, opting for an insult in a language the other boy can understand. “You’re not allowed out here.”

“Neither are you.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why are you?” Black gives off that same air his brother does. He reeks of fucking poshness, and privilege, and knowing that he knows how to get things done. Except Remus knows what goes on in Grimmauld Place. He knows that Sirius’ airs are at least half an act, and the other half drummed in by fear. For all he knows, Regulus Black is the same. 

Remus has secrets, including and not limited to last night. Sirius has secrets. This boy does, too, because if there’s one thing Remus knows it’s what someone with secrets loos like. He’ll be good at keeping them. If Regulus Black is even half as stubborn as his brother, he’s never going to explain why he’s out here.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Old enough.”

For what? Remus decides that isn’t a question he wants to ask. He’s fairly sure he knows the answer. He doesn’t need to hear it out loud. Sirius doesn’t, either, not that Sirius isn’t any of Remus’ concern any more. 

“You’re running away,” says the boy, and Remus looks at him for the first time as Regulus Black, person in his own right, rather than Regulus Black, brother of his best friend. He looks at the trunk he’s levitating ahead of him, and he looks at his clothes, which aren’t school uniform, despite the fact that it’s 10.30am on a Tuesday. Remus should be in Transfiguration. Regulus Black is supposed to be somewhere, too, and even if he has a free period, he isn’t supposed to be here. 

“So are you.”

“I do not have anything to run away from.” Regulus draws himself upwards with that statement, but even at his not-insignificant height he’s still shorter than Remus is. He can’t quite look him in the eye. But the fact that Remus is taller, broader, stronger, that doesn’t make Regulus any less of a presence. He’s intimidating. There’s something in the way he stare Remus down.

Maybe he doesn’t have anything to run from. Maybe he does. Maybe it’s something he’s running to.

“Voldemort?” Remus suggests.

“You don’t know anything about my life.”

“No. But I know what running away looks like.”

Remus is used to spotting the differences between the brothers. An inch difference in height, the colour of their scarves, their preferred Quidditch position, opinion on bloody purity, eye colour, likely willingness to accept a werewolf as a part of their life. Sirius is stronger, Regulus faster. He’s used to ignoring the similarities. They both have the same eyes, same laugh, same strange relationship with running away.

“I do not lack courage.”

“Nobody said you did.” Remus is done with this. He and his trunk and his Muggle clothing set off down the hill, away from Hogwarts, away from Regulus Black with his uniform and his possible Dark Mark and his running away.

Somehow they both end up back at Hogwarts by the evening. Remus can blame James and Peter. He can blame Gryffindor pride and the stubbornness that he inherited from his mother. He doesn’t know what Regulus is blaming.


	2. The Follower

Remus pulls his cloak around him a little more. He considers casting a warming charm on it, trying to imbue the unstable mass of wool and repairing charms with some semblance of actual warmth, but he decides it isn’t worth it. He’s going inside soon, anyway. The sun has set over the lake, and he’s already had to send six pairs of students inside who shouldn’t still be out here.

It’s as if they don’t know what a Dementor can do.

He’s tried to teach them, as best he can. After the Quidditch match fiasco, all classes fourth year and up have had a two week course on Dementors. Fifth years and up have attempted the Patronus Charm. All it’s achieved is a clump of white mist from one of the sixth years and two of the seventh, and four years worth of blank, expressionless faces and terrified eyes. He wonders if the whole thing was a mistake. The wizarding world is full of dark, silent creatures who travel with fear, and the Dementors are just the ones closest to them. Maybe he should teach them about Lethifolds next week. Truly put the fear of the silent into them.

He walks on, away from the castle, because that’s the behaviour of someone who’s about to go inside.

“Wilcox, Johnson, inside,” he says, coming across a seventh pair of students. They’re holding hands, looking sheepish, and Johnson is holding her wand. Probably not anything too nefarious. She’s in Gryffindor - she’s a Chaser on the team with Harry, Remus thinks - and Wilcox is a sixth year Ravenclaw. He takes Remus’ class more seriously than most.

“We were trying to do a Patronus, Sir,” says Miss Johnson, and Remus resists the urge to look over his shoulder for the teacher, the real actual teacher, that she’s talking to. It’s him, of course. “Jamie thinks that if we’re closer to the Dementors, we’ll find it easier. Something about the threat being real rather than perceived.” She shrugs.

“It’s an interesting hypothesis,” Remus says. And true, of course. “What were your findings?”

“Look,” says Wilcox. “ _Expecto Patronum!_ ” He screws up his face in concentration as he says the spell, and Remus doesn’t miss the slight glance at Miss Johnson before he does it. His wand issues a puff of silvery smoke. It’s far more than he managed in class. Miss Johnson manages the same.

“So what conclusion do you draw?”

“It’s easier closer to the Dementors,” says Wilcox. “But, if we get closer than this, it’d be harder, right Professor? Because they’d be sucking the happiness from us. We’d find it harder to draw on our strong memory.”

“Correct. Ten points to Ravenclaw, and to Gryffindor too, I suppose. And you’d do better, Miss Johnson, if your wand was more upright. You’re not trying to stab the Dementors, tempting as it may be. Wilcox, a smoother motion when you cast.”

They try again, producing stronger mist. Remus remembers that this wasn’t the point of talking to them.

“Good. Unfortunately, I have to take five points from each of your houses, as you should both be aware by now that you are expected to be in the castle by dusk.” He tries to smile as he says it, to convey that he understands why they want to do this, why school rules don’t seem as important as learning to protect yourselves from faceless monsters. They’re still five points up apiece. 

“Sorry, Professor.”

“We won’t do it again.”

“Get inside,” he tells them. “Before Filch sees you. And keep practicing.” You never know when you might need the skills, he doesn’t add. He thinks they may know that already. Voldemort was in the castle eighteen months ago, if not in his own body. Last year, there was a Basilisk roaming it. It feels like it did when he was at Hogwarts - creeping nervousness, never quite sure if the nervousness is going to need to turn into fear.

Remus waits until they’re a distance away, heading on a clear line back to the castle. They’re clever enough to pick a side door, one by the greenhouses that Professor Sprout - Pomona - often keeps unlocked until late so she can check on troublesome plants before bed. But then, he and James and Peter knew about the side door, they were smart enough not to risk Filch in the Entrance Hall, and it didn’t get any of them any further than he was, here. He shakes his head and resumes his patrol. Now he’s started, he might as well finish it, save whoever’s on duty a job.

He’s being followed.

“Fuck off,” he says. Dementors understand language, because how else would the Ministry tell them what to do? This one, and he’s certain it’s the same one, either doesn’t speak English or doesn’t care. Dementors are capable of rational thought. This one, judging by the fact that it keeps doing it, is capable of stalking entirely innocent Defence Against The Dark Arts Professors.

Not entirely innocent.

It stays far enough away that Remus suffers no more than flashes of unwanted memory. Close enough that he gets some. He thinks of the lessons he has to teach tomorrow, two lots of second years, one of firsts, and a fifth year class that’s as volatile as they get. He remembers Sirius scraping cursed skin from his back in the shared bathroom of their dormitory. He tries to work out how to prevent the fifth year Slytherin-Gryffindor class from duelling one another. He remembers Regulus Black at breakfast, a flash of dark skin under the sleeve of his robe, and Sirius storming from the hall. He remembers hearing the news about Sirius’ treachery. He plans half a class for his third years. He remembers the way Sirius almost got himself killed when his brother died.

_“Run!” Remus screams, but Sirius doesn’t listen, of course Sirius doesn’t listen. He runs, yes, but he runs towards the Death Eaters, bleeding from the head and roaring and Remus, of course, has to run after him. There’s an explosion. Remus can’t see Sirius._

No. Remus isn’t going to remember that. He points his wand at the Dementor.

“You know I can do a Patronus.”

It doesn’t move, but the memories stop flowing. It has some control over whether it brings up memories, then. Remus still feels it’s presence, sucking the happiness from the air around him, making the world more cold and dark and miserable than it had already been. The standard Dementor stuff. He wonders if it can control that, too.

All of the memories the Dementor dredges up are about the Blacks. They’re capable of rational thought, so it stands to reason they’d be capable of sifting, he decides. They’re looking for Black, after all, and Remus has more memories of him than he wants. And they’re digging up the bad ones, because that’s what they can do.

“I thought about Oblivating them myself,” he admits, whether to the empty space or the lake or the Dementor, or, he doesn’t know, maybe he’s talking to the Giant Squid. James claims he made friends with it. James was a bullshitter. “The memories of Sirius Orion Black the Third. That’s who you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

The Dementor says nothing, does nothing. Remus’ research suggests they’re not capable of speech, so he isn’t exactly surprised. It floats a foot or so off the ground, billowing out even though there’s no winds to move the folds of it’s shroud.

He glares at it.

“It’s easier to hate someone if you can’t remember when you liked them,” he says. He doesn’t look at the Dementor. “He was my friend. You’ll be able to see that.” Do Dementors see? He’s never seen one glide into a wall, so he thinks perhaps they do. And this one, yes, it’s the same one each time, seems to know who is is and where he is and be able to follow.

He tells it to fuck off in Welsh, in case it understands that better than it does English. It does nothing. It just hovers there, between Remus and the lake, that same foot or so off the damp gravel path, lurking, doing nothing. The sun is down now, the sky behind it is orange and grey, the shimmer of light from the castle behind Remus reflects onto the dark water of the lake. Remus pulls his cloak around him again. He swears at it in the only other language he knows, the bastard version of Swedish James picked up on an Order mission back in ‘79. If Dementors could mock people, this one would be, because it looks like it’s mocking him.

“Have it your way,” he says, and stomps on, boots crunching on the gravel, the Dementor keeping pace behind, the chill in the air following them as the move along the path.

—

“You’re still here.” The voice behind him is Regulus Black; Remus knows that without bothering to turn. He’s busy. 

Three minutes pass, with the presence of Regulus Black still behind him. Remus hasn’t turned to look, but he knows when there’s someone behind him, staring at him, even if he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t care. Which is a lie. Of course he cares, but Black hasn’t hexed him yet, he’s just standing there for no sodding reason interrupting the important reading that Remus is trying to do.

“I said, you’re still here.”

“Sod off.”

“No.”

Remus could, at this point, tell him he’s just like his brother, who’s taken to hounding Remus around the castle, apologising. Sometimes literally hounding, of course. It’s beyond an apology, what he did, and Remus ignores everything, stuck in his tiny clump of Remus and Peter and James and Lily, as the rest of Gryffindor Tower speculates on why Sirius Black is now lurking in corners. Most of them think it’s a sex thing, according to Peter. Lily agrees. James is all set to leap in and defend Remus, that of course it isn’t a sex thing, Remus Lupin might be gay but that and this aren’t linked. Lily tells him not to. Best to let them think that. Safer to let them think that. Remus agrees with Lily, as much as he hates the rumour.

Ultimately, Remus says nothing to Black. Who, just like his brother, takes no notice of the rejection.

“You were right,” he says. “I was running away. But not from what you think.”

“I think you overestimate how much I think about you,” says Remus. It’s a lie. Regulus Black consumed far more of Remus’ thoughts than he was happy with. 

“Perhaps I do.” He finds a seat on the ledge Remus is sitting on, putting himself less than six inches from Remus. “It is not as if you have little else to think of at the minute.”

It’s his last year of Hogwarts. NEWTs are looming. The war is looming. The school rumour mill thinks he hit on Sirius and was rejected, or they did something and then he was rejected, or something of that sort. Of course he’s got plenty to think about. He now has four detentions to attend, as well, and one of them is entirely James’ fault. But the Head Boy can’t be allowed to take the rap for something so mundane as exploding porridge. His arse is c0ld, because he’s sitting on a stone ledge, outdoors, at night, in the Scottish highlands. He’s a wizard, so he could do a warming charm, but he hasn’t and he won’t.

“Haven’t you got other things to be doing than stalking me?”

“I am here. You are also here.” Black says, as if that means something.

“Any reason?”

“I don’t find myself wanting to be in the Slytherin Common Room at the moment.” He pauses. He doesn’t look as composed as usual. “You’ve fallen out with my brother.”

The whole school knows that. The whole school knows what sort of shit happens in the Slytherin Common Room. Remus shrugs. 

“Try to work it out.”

“Why should I?” Remus’ voice is harsh, and perhaps Regulus Black doesn’t deserve that. The only people who know the truth of what happened are Snape, Sirius, James and himself, and Professor Dumbledore, and they’re sworn to secrecy. And Peter, who isn’t allowed to be officially told, on pain of the oath they’ve taken, but who’s worked it out by himself, having seen some of it through a rat’s eyes. “Why should I do anything your brother wants?”

“I never said Sirius wanted this,” Regulus says, and his voice is patient, as if he’s explaining to a four-year-old. “Sirius, as far as I know him, wants things that are terrible for him. I suspect that you have worked out the same fact about him. This is what I want.”

“I don’t care about what you want.” Remus cared about why he wanted this, of all things, but he isn’t going to give Black the satisfaction of him asking.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” He doesn’t leave. Remus glances at him. He’s inspecting his fingernails, deliberately looking down at them. 

“Why are you here?”

“Why are you here?”

“Do you know how fucking infuriating you are?”

“Yes.” Black gives Remus a small smile, that somehow warms him more than a warming charm would. Remus glares at Black. He’s not in the mood for this. “Obviously. Don’t you know how easy you are to infuriate?”

Remus launches himself from the ledge and walks one, two, three paces away. He contemplates going further away, but no, he stops and he turns and he looks at the other boy, still staring down at his own fingernails. His uniform robes have bloody embroidery on the cuffs, subtle, with black thread, but it’s there. Sirius’ used to, too, before he ran away.

“If this is about something,” he says, “then you need to tell me now, because I’ve got things to be doing that aren’t being the bait in some sodding game.”

“Ah, yes,” says Regulus. “You have other things to be doing. Perhaps Prefect duties. Detention. My brother.”

“I’m not interested in your brother.” Remus balls his fists and shoves his hands in his pockets. It’s Sirius that would overreact. That’s not what Remus does. Except it is, or it seems to be going that way.

Regulus looks up and raises an eyebrow. “The school rumour would be wrong, then, I suppose.” 

“Obviously. Your brother’s not interested in men, and I’m not interested in dickheads.”

“He’s done something worse than a badly-made pass at you.”

“Get to the point.”

“I haven’t got a point,” says Regulus, standing up. “I thought you might.”

Remus stomps off. He goes down three flights of stairs, along a corridor, and from there into a secret passage where he checks the Marauder’s Map. Filch is nowhere to be seen, James and Peter are in the dormitory, Sirius in the Prefect’s bathroom. Remus isn’t going to question why he’s there. He could safely get back to Gryffindor Tower, but, instead, he stands and he watches the small black dot labelled Regulus Black, which stands outside for twenty more minutes and then takes a slow, meandering route back down to the Slytherin Common Room. 

Why he does this, he has no sodding idea.

—

Obviously, there’s a rumour going around the school that Professor Lupin is friends with a Dementor. 

And, even more obviously, it’s Snape who imparts this news to Remus, in front of half the staff, with a sneer and a roll of his eye that suggests he finds this very funny. 

“Apparently,” he says, relaxing into an armchair in the staff room, while Remus sits on the edge of his. They both cup a mug of tea in their hands. “According to my fifth years, you are regularly seen conversing with the Dementor down by the lake. All rather cosy. I wonder what other creatures they’d suggest that you’re friendly with, if they were to be allowed the correct information?”

“Severus,” says Minerva, barely looking up from her marking. “We’ve spoken about this. You two are to be civil, even if you cannot manage friendship. Remus’ problem is for the staff to manage, and is irrelevant to students.”

Remus considers saying many things. “I’m fairly certain it isn’t possible to be friends with a Dementor,” he opts for, his voice mild. He wants to fizz with anger, but that approach has only ever made Snape worse. “Perhaps I need a refresher lesson on Dementors for the fifth year classes.”

“Perhaps we need a competent Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher,” says Snape. “Who isn’t a - “

“Severus!” says Minerva.

—

The Marauders go into November a fractured mess. Sirius’ birthday passes.

“Shouldn’t we wish him a happy birthday?” Peter asks, at breakfast, watching Sirius. 

“No,” says James, spooning sugar into his tea with more violence than it needs. “He made his choice.”

Remus isn’t so sure that this is worth it, not any more. Sirius sits hunched over, the way he always has when he’s upset. For the first few days it hadn’t been like that - he’d been so sure he was justified, so certain he’d been right, that he’d sat alone, back straight, glaring down anyone who dared look his way. He’s with a small clump other Gryffindors now, but ignoring them, sitting all scrunched up and looking only at his own food. 

On the way out the Great Hall, flanked by James and Peter and Lily and Mary, Remus makes eye contact with Regulus Black. By accident on his part, but not on the other boy’s. 

NEWTS are looming, the war is looming. Remus doesn’t have time for Sirius Black’s shit, and he sure as anything doesn’t have time for his brother’s cryptic shit, either.


	3. Souls

Remus does his research. He teaches the fifth years again on Wednesday, a double lesson for each class that he was intending to use for duelling practice. Instead it’s time for more lectures on Dementors. Specifically, why one shouldn’t attempt friendship with one.

Remus idly wonders, while the class file in and settle in their seats, if Dementors can desire friendship. Why, exactly, is one seeking out him in particular? He can only assume it’s the way they get their kicks.

“Dementors,” he begins. “What can we remember from the last time we discussed them?”

The class rattle off facts in turn; they guard Azkaban, their Kiss takes your soul, they feed on fear and negative emotions, they’re repelled by Patronuses. All things that, if cited on their OWL exam in the spring, would give them an Exceeds Expectations for the question.

“They have souls,” says George Weasley. 

“Unlike us,” says Fred, pointing at his hair. Two or three students laugh. Remus considers it.

“They are hypothesised to have souls,” Remus corrects. “There’s a school of thought that puts them as physical beings, and another that suggests them to be nothing more than a single soul, corrupted and powered by a thirst for fear. But, research is limited, and therefore, so are facts. We know little about the true nature of Dementors. Why?”

“Nobody wants to get close enough to study one,” says Miss Johnson. “Is that right?”

“In essence.”

“Aren’t you friends with one?” asks Lee Jordan. Ah, yes. The rumour. It’s entirely possible Lee Jordan is partly responsible for the rumour, given what Remus knows about him and gossip.

“I am a member of the Hogwarts staff, and, as such, patrol the grounds from time to time. Dementors want feeding. They’ll follow anyone, given a chance.”

“Even teachers?”

“Teachers have fears too, Miss Harrison.” Too dark. “They have fears that they’ll have to deal with another rule-breaking student, and miss dinner for the second time in a week.”

A small laugh.

“In addition, Dementors, much like centaurs and ghosts, flit between categorisation as being and beast. We’ve discussed the Ministry classification system previously, when we’ve covered dark creatures previously, and those of you who take Care of Magical Creatures will know more of the detail.” Remus wanders up and down the rows as he talks. He remembers Hagrid’s views on classification. He knows what his own classification is, more to the point, which makes him entirely aware of how uncomfortable must of his students would be, at this moment, if they knew the truth of him. “What do you think they are? Warrington?”

Warrington is writing a love letter, of all things, instead of concentrating on the class. Remus banishes it to his bag. He can finish it on his own time.

“Er, Professor, beasts?”

“Why?” 

Warrington looks stuck. Remus allows Lee Jordan to rescue him.

“Well,” he begins, “it depends on what classification system you’d want to use. Some would go on an entirely human-centric definition that says beings are only those who are or have once been human; so, humans and ghosts. A lot of ghosts prefer the term spirit for themselves, though. Others use the conscious thought test, and it isn’t clear whether they have that. They can follow instructions, can’t they, but so can Hippogriffs and Crups. I don’t think they’ve got the level of thought of a centaur, for example, and that’s disputed enough. In shape they’re humanoid, but I’m not sure that’s enough of a factor to classify them a being.”

“Five points to Gryffindor, Jordan, an excellent thought process.” Even if it isn’t quite clear what point is being made. Remus sits on his desk, facing the class, looking out on the sea of faces that don’t seem to be quite sure where the lesson is going. “And five to Slytherin, Warrington, for correctness. The Ministry classifies Dementors as beasts.”

“And it’s ordered them to Hogwarts,” says George Weasley. Remus thinks it’s George. “Why, Professor? My dad works for the Ministry, and he says it’s for our protection, but with everything you’ve told us about them, makes me think they’re more dangerous than people are telling us. What if they see some that looks like Sirius Black? One of his relations or something?”

“The vast majority of Black’s relations are dead or else, imprisoned in Azkaban, and those who remain thankfully bear no physical resemblance to him.” Remus thinks of Draco Malfoy, who, of course, is his nephew. He’s sure Malfoy is aware of that, and perhaps many of the other Slytherin students all related to the same clutch of families, but the rest of the school doesn’t seem to be. At least a handful of others will be a relation in some way, if more distantly. “But yes, logically, I can see how you would think that to be a concern. If I was to tell you that a Dementor can ascertain something of an identity from all of us as we pass, at least to establish who we’re not, how would you feel about their classification?”

“Crups can identify a human,” says Fred Weasley. “But only if they know them. And they have eyes. Do Dementors have eyes?”

“I’ve tried never to get close enough to find out.”  
Fred nods. “Very sensible, sir.”

“I try to be.” He sighs. This is important, but he doesn’t want to scare them unnecessarily. They all think they’re almost adults, these sixth years, and within the next year and a half they’ll all reach adulthood. They’re as prepared for the world as he was at sixteen, which is not at all.

“They must be able to see,” says George, “else they’d crash into a wall.” He mimes a Dementor crashing into a wall, and the class laughs. Remus does too, this time. It was close enough to his own thought process on the subject, anyway.

“How do they get inside our minds?” asks a skinny, pale looking Slytherin girl whose name Remus can’t recall. He doesn’t think she’s ever spoken in class before. “How do they know where our worst memories are? I - well, I read something, they can pull out memories people can’t even remember themselves, can’t they?” She shivers when she says it, and Remus is as sure as he can be that this isn’t something she’s read at all, but, rather, something she doesn’t want to admit to in front of the others in the class. He isn’t going to push it. Instead, he resolves to keep a closer eye on her. He’d tell her head of house, but, that’s Snape, and however much Minerva tells them to get on, Remus isn’t going to trust Snape as far as he can throw him.

“It’s their skill,” he says. “A magical property imbued into whatever’s under that cloak. The same way that a unicorn’s blood can restore life, the same way that magical plants have properties useful in potion making, an intrinsic part of a Dementor is it’s ability to pull memories from a human. Notice I say human. A Muggle cannot see a Dementor, but they’ll experience the effects in the same way.”

“Why?”

“Nobody knows.”

“So why’re you teaching us about Dementors if you don’t know anything about them?” asks Warrington.

“Because they’re outside the school, idiot,” snaps one of the Weasleys, turning to face Warrington. He glowers back, hand next to his wand on his desk.

“Mr Weasley isn’t wrong,” says Remus, raising a hand to prevent any kind of argument breaking out. “But, there’s a way to say it, and that wasn’t it.” The Weasley mutters an apology. That wouldn’t normally work, in fact, Remus thinks this is the longest he’s ever gone in this class without having to take points or issue detentions for some sort of altercation. They want to know about this, even the ones who don’t think Defence Against the Dark Arts is worth their time, even the ones whose families will be explaining why the subject is worthless. The ones whose families are deep into the Dark Arts themselves, although Remus isn’t allowed to make assumptions.

“The Ministry has seen fit to send Dementors here, in the hope that they will help protect us. Dumbledore has explained they’re not to be trifled with. Yet I keep finding students outside after dark, far closer to the edges of the grounds than is sensible.” Angelina Johnson looks shamefaced. It isn’t just about her, to be fair, and she’s not even the only one in this class. “I don’t think you understand them. Dementors, if you ask me, are beings. Dark creatures, not to be trusted, but beings. They’re capable of understanding who you are, of being able to unpick the recesses of your mind to understand where your worst memories are. They know how best to affect you. They cherry-pick not just your worst memory, but the one that will affect you most at that time. They can play on your fears.”

They can work out that he’s got memories of Sirius, and the ones of Sirius aren’t even his worst. Finding out that James and Lily are dead is his worst, and the bite, and the first transformation, and the things that his father did in the aftermath of the bite. The Dementors are looking for Sirius, and with him they’re dredging up other things, but they’re looking for Sirius.

He’s been silent for too long. The class stare at him, half in awe, half afraid.

“They have conscious thought, and they have souls,” he says. “Corrupted souls, yes, but a soul nonetheless.”

“Corrupted?” asks Warrington.

“Certain actions we take can damage our soul. Curses, for example, both ones we ourselves cast and ones that others cast upon us. The most frequently cited is the Killing Curse, which is said to damage souls, perhaps even splinter them. Other curses may leave a mark, which can twist our behaviour, force us to act out of our personality. Soul damage makes us less stable.”

The class is silent. Thinking. Remus feels light-headed. 

“Now,” he says. “That’s the theory. Now for the practical. Patronuses. We made solid progress on them previously so I’m expecting progress today. I’m not looking for anything spectacular,” he adds, looking around at the class, half of them still fearful, the other half clinging to this new thread of normal teaching. “What I’m looking for is something. Something is enough to slow them down.”

They throw themselves into the Patronuses more than ever before, his class. He’s proud.

—

The Marauders come back together almost as easily as they broke. It’s James that’s the most wary of Sirius, even after they’ve talked it out and Remus had made it clear that Sirius is forgiven. James, who’s never been betrayed by someone he trusted before. Sirius has years of experience in that, and, besides, he wasn’t the one that did the betraying. Remus has his relationship with his father. Peter’s had his share, what with his parents being who they are. But James’ life is straightforward, in the way of trust, and he’s never had to build a bridge like this before.

“He won’t do it again,” says Remus, firmly. “And he isn’t getting any other chances, if he does.”

Sirius nods, contrite. Remus isn’t a Legilimens, but he’s pretty good at knowing when someone’s lying, regardless, and Sirius is sorry. He means every word of the apology. Peter thinks so too, and despite nobody asking her opinion, Lily agrees, too. James relents.

He’s not surprised that he sees the other Black again, two nights later. Remus is almost expecting it. 

The library is about to close; only Remus, James and Lily remain. Sirius and Peter are in a detention, one they all agree is unfair, after all, Mulciber had cursed Mary,. Peter had only been defending her. And yes, Sirius shouldn’t have punched Mulciber in the face, but he’d been disarmed and Mary needed the hospital wing thanks to Mulciber. He’s only got a bruise on the side his face, thanks to Sirius. James alternates between scribbling on his own Transfiguration essay and on Peter’s, as he’s the best mimic of handwriting. It’s a testament to how unfair the detention is that Lily doesn’t even mention the homework forgery. She’s handed hers in, and is working on Charms. Remus underlines paragraphs in his textbook to show James, and writes his essay. 

Regulus Black slinks in, his feet silent on the stone floor, and slips in between two stacks of shelving.

“I’m going to go and check on Mary,” says Lily, snapping her book shut. “I can’t concentrate.”

“I’ll come with you,” says James. He jabs his wand at the two essays, and both spring up into neat scrolls and float into his bag. “I’ve only got the conclusions to do, anyway, and I want to check Pete’s okay with his before I do that.”

“Remus?” asks Lily. “Do you want us to walk you back to the Tower on the way? Or you can come, if you want?”

“I’m fine,” says Remus. “I’m going to look for a couple of books, still got Arithmancy to do for tomorrow, and I don’t understand some of it.”

“I’ll help you when we’re back,” James offers. “Did mine last week. I’ve handed it in, else I’d let you copy.”

Lily tuts at that, but she also takes James’ hand.

“It’s alright. You know what I’m like. If I don’t work it out for myself, I’ll never understand it, and it might be on the NEWT.”

James nods. “Stay safe,” he says. “Don’t fight anyone.”

They disappear off, hand in hand, James carrying Lily’s books as well as his own bag. Remus watches them go, folding his own books into his bag. He understands the Arithmancy fine, although it isn’t entirely a lie, he hasn’t done it and it’s a page of eighteen problems by tomorrow at 9am. Which seems slightly unachievable. And he shouldn’t be walking the corridors alone. They’re all targets, the Marauders and Lily, for blood status or blood traitory, and there’s been too many incidents like what’s happened to Mary. Remus hasn’t bothered counting them since June of last year.

He shouldn’t be wandering off into the stacks, not given that he knows there’s someone in here who associates with the people that’re behind the attacks. Rumour is they’re all Death Eaters, or will be., and Mulciber wears the Mark on his arm. He’s proud. He shows it off. He’s going to be expelled for what he did, but he won’t care. Regulus Black sits with him and Snape and Yaxley and the Carrows and the rest of them, he owls with his cousins, a Death Eater and a Death Eater’s wife, he’s been seen with Lucius Malfoy and Rabastan Lestrange in Hogsmeade. He’s a part of all of this, he’s on the wrong side.

“Lupin,” he says, lurking in the darkness of the Herbology section. He holds a book on Japanese medicinal plants. His eyes glitter in the lamplight.

“Black.”

“I see you and my brother are friends again.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Then why, exactly, have you come to find me?”

“I haven’t. I need a book.”

“Do you?” Regulus snaps the book he’s holding shut. The noise reverberates around the library. As far as Remus knows, they’re the only two in here, them and Madam Pince, who hates Remus anyway. Great. He and two people who hate him.

Does Regulus hate him?

“Yes. Get out my way.”

Regulus doesn’t move. “Convenient, isn’t it, that the very book you need happens to be in this section.”

“More like unlucky,” says Remus. He’s going to have to take one now, so he turns to look at the shelves. Nothing catches his eye. Every title he sees is third year level or below, and would hardly be convincing to Regulus Black, who seems to find all of this amusing, the way the corners of his eyes creep upwards. Remus stalks past him, which is inadvisable, cornered as he now is between books and a wall and Regulus Black, but he takes a text on natural poisons from the shelve. A hand grabs his wrist. Remus makes for his wand, but it isn't in his pocket. There’s a thud; two books hit the floor.

“Don’t you know how to keep your wand safe?” Regulus asks, twisting it in his hand. His other pins Remus’ wrist into the bookshelf. Remus kicks him in the shins.

“Wands aren’t everything,” he says, wresting himself free. Regulus, holding Remus’ wand, steps closer. Remus steps back, almost into the wall. “Your brother punched Mulciber, didn’t he? I taught him to hit properly.”

“I don’t doubt it,” says Regulus. “It certainly isn’t a skill he would have been taught by the family.”

Sirius hadn’t been taught anything that’s any use by that family. He’d been taught how to lash out, though, that bit Remus hadn’t needed to help with. 

“Fuck off,” Remus says. “Give me my wand back.” He pulls himself upwards, making himself his full height. It doesn’t help. 

“Be reasonable,” says Regulus. 

“It’s my wand.”

“Calm down. Besides, if you were going to punch me you’d have done it by now.”

Remus considers his options. He isn’t going to punch Regulus, despite the implied threat. He’s in the library, for one thing, and Pince already hates him, and he’s cornered, and Regulus has his wand. He’d have to punch him clean out cold in order to get past without incident, and then still get past Pince. He’s never been much use at talking himself out of trouble, he isn ’t James. He’s better at avoiding it, on the whole, but he walked right into this one. 

He also considers exactly why he followed Regulus Black here, into this corner, and comes up with nothing except curiosity and an urge to do so.

Regulus twiddles Remus’ wand again. He watches Remus as if he’s hungry. One of his polished shoes taps against the carpet. There’s an intensity in his eyes that reminds Remus of Sirius, except Sirius has never looked at him like this. 

“Pince will be here to chase us out, soon. I can wait.” Remus leans back against the wall, bending a knee to prop his foot up on it. He selects a book from the shelves, this one’s a tome on the management of Arctic, Antarctic and tundra plants, and opens it. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

It’s about thirty seconds before Regulus does something, which is about what Remus expects. Blacks have never been any use at self-restraint, not in Remus’ experience, and it turns out that Regulus is no exception. What he does, that isn’t what Remus expects. He glowers, stuffs Remus’ wand into his own pocket, and yanks up the sleeve of his robe. The left sleeve. His arm is a mess of dark ink, a skull and a snake, the Dark Mark.

“You can tell Dumbledore, if you like,” says Regulus. “He knows anyway.”

“Why are you here, if he knows you’re a Death Eater?” Remus spits the words, the venom should be obvious. It isn’t a surprise, this, but being faced with the reality of a Dark Mark is different to the expectation of one. The snake eyes him with malice, shifting slightly in a regular, rhythmic pace. Remus’ stomach turns. It isn’t just a Mark, it’s more than that, he can feel the magic.

“We can do more for the cause out in the world,” says Regulus. He draws the sleeve back over it. “Here, all that we can do is learn what Dumbledore teaches his students, and recruit. Scare Mudbloods back to the Muggle world after they graduate. We cannot kill our enemies within the walls of Hogwarts. We cannot do everything that we may wish to. Mulciber got himself expelled on purpose, you know. He wants to serve the Dark Lord in more ways than he can at Hogwarts.”

It makes sense. Dumbledore would want to protect these students, he’d say they’d made bad decisions, that they had time to repent yet. Some of them will, no doubt. Remus isn’t sure they should be allowed the chance. They’ve made their choices, Remus has made his. 

“Why are you showing me this?” His stomach still feels sick. “I’ll tell Sirius.”

“What Sirius wants is none of my concern. And, you won’t. You’ll keep it to yourself, because you don’t want to upset him. You’re just friends again, and you know what will happen if he knows I’m Marked. He could get himself expelled this time.”

“You’re a twat,” says Remus.

“I am who I am. Which might not be what you think.”

“What do you want from me, then?” If he’s hoping that Remus will do exactly that, tell Sirius, get him expelled, he wouldn’t have said that. This may seem like a stupid act, but Regulus has ten Outstanding OWLs, he’s ambitious and clever and cunning, and he’s not doing this for no reason. However rash it seems. 

“You’ll work it out,” says Regulus, and reaches into his pocket, tosses Remus back his wand, and leaves.


	4. Not My Friend

The Dementor finds him again. It always does. Remus feels it before he sees it, a mass of doom and gloom and desperation.

“You’re not my friend,” he tells it. 

The Dementor does nothing, says nothing. Remus expected nothing less, because what else would happen? He’s approaching as mad as Sirius Black, if he thinks he’ll get a reply from a loosely held together mass of soul and despair. Even if this one seems to follow him. But he’s talking to it, and he doesn’t even have the excuse of boredom. He’s got about sixty things he should be doing over lurking out here having a conversation with something that’s got less conversation skills than Snape.

“You know I’m talking to you,” says Remus, continuing, because he’s not going to start shying away from lost causes now. “What do you want? There’s something. There must be something, otherwise you’d be hassling someone else. If it’s memories of Sirius Black, I’ve not got anything new. Nothing that’s relevant. Just a load of reminiscing, twelve years old at the least, and you can scour it for clues all you like. He killed my best friends, and I want him caught more than you do.”

The Dementor glides closer. Remus remembers.

He’s running through the undergrowth. Death Eaters appear, they weren’t expecting Death Eaters, and he’s with Sirius, and Sirius is hit by something, and Remus looks back, but he’s being forced onwards, the Death Eaters separating him from Sirius, and it’s all he can do to stay alive.

He remembers the day Sirius found out that Regulus had the Dark Mark. He’d tried to kill him, practically, in the Charms corridor, and Remus and James and Sirius had pulled them apart.

He remembers Sirius, right in his eye-line as he was about to transform, and the split second of relief as he turned into the dog, just as Remus lost his mind.

None of those are his worst memories. They’re all awful, yes. They’re all things he wishes had never happened, and all things that he can still feel the weight of in his chest if he thinks about them. The fear as he was separated from the injured Sirius, the fear that Sirius would kill his brother, or else his brother would kill him, the fear he’d bite Sirius, or worse, as a human. But they’re not his worst.

“Exhausted the font of memories?” he asks. “Is that all you can do? Is it? Can’t make it any worse for me than that?” He’s being a dick, he knows that, shouting at a Dementor. 

The Dementors know about the dog.

“I don’t think it’ll be any use to you,” he says. “If you haven’t been able to catch him before now, and perhaps you knew, anyway, when he was in Azkaban, then how will it help you now? He made it past you before. I’d work on that, rather than dredging me for memories.”

The Dementor slides backwards. Who knew they could reverse.

“Like I said, it won’t help you. I can’t help you.”

He could tell Dumbledore. He’s almost done it, ten times at least, and that’s just since Dumbledore approached him with the offer of the job. He almost did it after Halloween, that Halloween, not even this one, but what good would it have done then? Sirius Black was in prison, James and Lily and Peter were dead, and who was to know that he’d escape the prison?

He should tell Dumbledore. But it won’t make any difference. Sirius knows the secret passages better than anyone, except Remus and James and Peter, and Remus has already passed on all of that information. The walls around the grounds are spelled against human and animal intrusion alike. 

“I’ve not done anything wrong,” he says, to the Dementor, to himself. But he has, hasn’t he? He didn’t manage to convince the Order that Sirius wasn’t to be trusted. He didn’t really work it out himself, not until two weeks before, and then it was too late. He hasn’t told anyone that Sirius is an Animagus. He hasn’t protected Harry. He never managed to help Regulus, did he?

He doesn’t think it’s the Dementor that makes him remember when Regulus died. The way Sirius had crumpled at the letter from his family. The way Remus had already known.

“Fuck off,” he says, to the Dementor and to the spectre and the ghost.

—

Remus stays at Hogwarts for Christmas. It isn’t the plan, but James’ parents are in quarantine with Dragon Pox, Remus’ dad has sent him a fifteen feet long letter about his disappointment in him, and neither Sirius or Peter have any desire to return home, either. Lily stays, too. That’s more to do with wanting to be where James is, though. She likes her parents.

Sirius stomps around the castle like he’s angry at the very stones of it. He’d discovered last week about the Mark on Regulus’ forearm, they’d duelled, everyone involved including James, Peter and Remus had served detention. And Dumbledore had reacted just as Regulus had said he would. It was safer for these Death Eaters to be within the castle, unable to cause as much trouble as they could be outside. Staff patrols would step up. Better enchantments would be places on the castle to alert staff and Prefects to trouble. A lecture would be given at dinner.

The Death Eaters are still attacking students in the castle.

“We can’t show that we’re scared,” says Lily, a prime target, Muggleborn Head Girl, going out with a pureblood blood-traitor. “We’ve got to carry on as normal.”

“I’m not scared.” Sirius hasn’t sat down for a week, or it doesn’t seem like he has. He stomps up and down on the carpet in front of the sofas, where the rest of them sit. The Tower is almost empty; they have the common room practically to themselves. “I’m going to do something.”

“What?” asks James. “You can’t take all of them on by yourself.”

James is right, and Remus can’t, either, but he can do something. It’s not a very good plan, and, honestly, it’s about as likely to be effective as Sirius’ plan, but it’s worth something. 

Regulus Black returns to the school with the other students, early in January. Remus takes the Map whenever he can, and he looks for the tiny dot labelled Regulus Black, and he watches it. It rarely travels alone. It flits between classes, common room, library and Quidditch Pitch, always accompanied by a clump of friends. Of Death Eaters. Remus would be his last two Galleons that all of those in this group are Marked, that all of them have stood before Voldemort and promised their shitty lives to him. He thinks of several rude words for all of them, and shares Sirius’ urge to hex them all into next week, and only half-heartedly enacts his Prefect responsibilities to keep order when Sirius tries, inevitably, several times a week. He doesn’t use any of those words on Regulus Black, nor the few, surreptitious, hexes he manages to place. Remus doesn’t analyse why.

It’s mid January before he tracks Regulus down. He’s on the top of Ravenclaw Tower, which isn’t a place Remus would have thought to look, but that’s the beauty of the Map. He’s alone. So, knowing that this is a bollocks plan, and that it won’t do anything, he steals James’ cloak and disappears up there, the others busy helping James come up with yet more intricate and showy Quidditch plays. He places a couple of experimental charms on the suits of armour on the way up, an alibi. He considers stealing Regulus’ wand, as payback for the time in the library.

“Afternoon,” he says. Regulus Black jumps.

“If you’re here on behalf of my brother,” he warns.

“I’m not. And I didn’t tell him, either. He came to the conclusion of what you’ve done all by himself.”

“I assumed so. Sirius is cleverer than I am, that much has always been true.” Regulus is twisting something in his hand, something silver and glimmering. He stashes it into a pocket before he turns properly around, facing Remus. He’s grown, Remus thinks. He’s still shorter and skinnier than Remus, still sharp of feature, a Seeker’s build, but he’s older looking. He’s still sixteen, playing at adulthood.

“Why do you attack people in the corridors?”

“They are traitors and scum. The Dark Lord will not permit them to live once they leave Hogwarts, if they continue to oppose him, and so why should we allow them to go through Hogwarts unscathed? They may yet see the light, if they understand what is to come.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Remus says. He isn’t exactly an authority on Regulus Black, but he thinks he understands enough of who he is to know that, at least. “It’s someone else’s lines.”

“Doesn't everyone borrow? Did you come up with your entire ideology by yourself, or were you shaped by your parents, your friends, Dumbledore? We have different influences.”

“You and your brother had eleven years of the same influences.”

“Sirius has always been contrary, and unsubtle.”

“I didn’t come up here to argue with you,” says Remus. This was as ineffective an idea as he’d thought it was going to be. “I came up here to ask you to stop.” He pauses. There’s a couple of inches between the two boys, and Remus feels the lack of space. “It isn’t working, your tactic. It’s making us want to fight you more.”

“Let me guess,” says Regulus, turning away from Remus and walking towards the edge of the tower. Remus follows him, like a lost dog. “My brother is threatening to hex the entire of Slytherin House single-handedly into submission. You’re all intending to join the Order of the Phoenix when you leave here. Potter is giving up a Quidditch career for it, and Pettigrew is giving up whatever his insignificant plans were. You and my brother have no plans anyway. You’re going to cover yourselves in glory and beat the enemy and survive the war and live happily ever after. Potter will marry his Mudblood.”

“We’re going to do what’s right.”

“Right is subjective. Those who join the Dark Lord believe they are doing what’s right.”

Remus doesn’t doubt that. They stand together, he and Regulus, looking down over the parapets of the tower, onto the blackness of the lake, and, beyond that, Hogsmeade and the mountains of Scotland. If he walks a little way around the tower, he’ll be able to see James and Sirius and Peter, swooping around the Quidditch pitch. 

“Just make sure you’re making your own decisions.” He isn’t sure why he’s giving Regulus advice.

“The same applies to you.”

“Don’t try to recruit me.” Remus shudders. They tried it last year, sending a pal of Greyback’s to try and talk him into the other side. The Ministry offers nothing for werewolves, and wizarding society almost as little. “I won’t join.” Others will, he knows. Voldemort, if he intends to follow through on any of it, offers a deal most werewolves won’t be able to refuse. A purpose, a place in society, clothes, food, money. Something to hunt, every month, for the ones that are that way inclined, and if they’re not, they soon will be. 

“He’s interested in you.” There’s no doubt who ‘he’ is. “One might think that strange. A half-blood of no small magical power, no, but no discernible skill or particular talent.” He turns his body, facing Remus. “Unless one knows what you are, of course.”

“By which you mean?”

“I think you know.”

Remus’ instinct is to run. No, to attempt to Obliviate him and then run, far and fast, back to the safety of the common room. But then if he knows, and Snape knows, Snape worked it out before that confirmation, then who else does? Lily worked it out. James and Sirius and Peter know. How long until the whole school know, how long until he’s hounded out of here for good? He can’t Obliviate anyone. He doesn’t even think he knows how.

“Don’t worry,” says Regulus, looking amused, and there’s the pity in his eyes, too, but there’s also something else. “I’m not going to tell anyone. Have I yet? Snape worked it out on his own, as I’m sure you know, and then there was my brother’s involvement in that.”

“How do you know?” Remus realises he’s backed away, up against a wall, and he’s gripping his wand in his pocket. He tries to relax. It’s futile. The skin on his knuckles is probably white, he’s tense, he’s hunched his shoulders.

“Mother believes it proper for us to be aware of all forms of magic, including those of the mind.” Regulus, by contrast, looks as though he tells people he knows they’re a werewolf every day. “Legilimency is a powerful tool. Your friend Peter is incredibly susceptible. As is my brother, but I find myself unwilling to delve into his memories.”

No, thinks Remus. Of course you don’t want to. That’d raise too many demons. The things that are in there, things that maybe Regulus doesn’t explicitly know about, but he knows enough about that family to know that something happened there. He doesn’t want to know. He wants to be able to bury his head into the sand. 

He realises he hasn’t said anything yet.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Regulus promises. “I don’t think you deserve that.” And then he reaches out, and Remus, like the cornered animal he is, tries to back away, but he doesn’t have anywhere left to go. He expects a hex or a punch. What he gets is a hand, on the top of his shoulder. A gentle hand. “I’m not going to tell anyone,” he repeats, and then he goes out through the door, back into the castle, and Remus hears the tap of his shoes on the stairs.

Remus stands exactly where he left him, and wonders what the hell just happened.

—-

“It’s curse damage,” Remus proclaims, straightening up and putting his wand back into his pocket. He’s in the Hospital Wing, and for once, it isn’t because of his monthly problem or because one of his friends has been an idiot (they’re all dead, this reminds him, dead or traitors). He’s here because a student has been an idiot, admittedly. “What on Earth were you doing?”

Lee Jordan grimaces. “I told Madame Pomfrey,” he says. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Remus sits on a chair next to the bed. This isn’t his job, and his bedside manner isn’t up to much. He’s not a Head of House or a Healer for a reason. Only some of the reason is lycanthropy. But Dark Curses are his job, and this is one of those.

“Mr Jordan,” he says. “In order to fix the damage that has been done, and continues to be done, to your body, I do need to know as accurately as possible what occurred. If it truly wasn’t your fault, then it won’t go any further than me.”

Jordan looks pained. His eyes flick from Remus to the doorway to the slowly pulsating green mess that is his left forearm. 

“So I was in the dungeons,” he says, “and I don’t think why matters, Professor, but I saw something going on, so I went to investigate. Long story short, I didn’t see who it was, but they cursed me with this.”

The question Remus wants to ask is ‘why were you in the dungeons?’ as it’s a Sunday, there aren’t any classes, and Jordan is a Gryffindor. He decides not to bother. The nature of the curse is far more important, because this is one of two things. One of them is benign, if annoying, and the other is Dark Magic that will react incredibly badly to the cure for the first.

“Did you hear an incantation?”

Jordan thinks. “Yes, Professor.”

“And it was?”

“It sounded like removery or something. There was a word or two before, I didn’t catch those.” He looks at his arm again. “I was shouting swear words at him.”

“Why?”

“Whoever it was looked like they were bullying a firstie.”

“I see.” Remus suspects this is the cursing sort of damage. He isn’t allowed to swear out loud in front of the students, and Minerva’s told him off twice for that already, so he swears in his head. “This is Dark magic, Jordan. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you did the wrong thing. But, unfortunately, sometimes there’s consequences to doing the right thing.”

“Can you remove it?”

“Curse damage is something I have some experience with.” He doesn’t want to think about any of that experience, gained in the depths of a war. He doesn’t want to think about another pulsating arm, split and cracked and damaged beyond repair, and how he failed there. “I cannot promise I can remove it. The nature of the curse is designed to prevent the complete removal. I, however, think that I can neutralise it, and perhaps return the appearance of your arm to normal. You will have to use appropriate aftercare.”

He couldn’t neutralise it the last time.

“Are you ready, Mr Jordan? There’s no time like right now.”

Jordan nods. Remus can do this.

—

“You’re a spy,” he says, the next time he sees Regulus. It’s the only reason he’s got. “Voldemort’s asked you to spy on me, so that he can make another play for recruiting me.”

“Wrong,” says Regulus. “Try again.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You don’t. You trust me. You understand that spy would, really, be far more subtle than I’m being, and, besides, you’re the one that’s found me, this time. I haven’t looked for you in days.”

Remus thinks about that. It’s true enough, but he’s looked for Regulus to accuse him of this. That’s all.

“It all makes sense,” he says. “I’m the only one in Hogwarts like me, and we all know that Voldemort wants people like me. We know Malfoy and the Lestranges and Avery have recruited at Hogwarts. Stands to reason he’s got another one to do it, now Avery’s left. You’re following me around. You never say why. You’re a shit spy, but you’re a spy.”

“I won’t deny that the Dark Lord asked me to recruit likely students within Hogwarts,” says Regulus. A strange expression crosses his face at that. Like it isn’t something he wants to be doing. Probably not exciting enough. He’s probably hoping for more glory. “But I am not attempting to recruit you.”

“Good. I won’t join.”

“Which I am aware of.”

It’s an odd stalemate now. Both of them eye the other one.

“I could tell Dumbledore,” Remus threatens. “I could tell him that you’re recruiting here.”

“Dumbledore knows,” says Regulus, airily. “I don’t like the man, but I cannot deny that he knows what goes on in his school. He’s unhappy with the choices I have made in my life, and has offered me the chance to repent, and his protection if I do so.”

“But you won’t.”

“No.”

“Why not?” 

“Because,” says Regulus, very slowly, “there is a reason that I am with the Dark Lord.”

“Yeah,” says Remus, rashly, even he knows that, “because you’re a fucking idiot who thinks he’s right.”

“I’m with him for a reason,” Regulus repeats, which doesn’t mean that Remus’ assumption isn’t true.

“You’re an idiot,” says Remus. “You’ll die for him, and then, what?” He’s not sure why he’s arguing with Regulus, he’s a bloody Death Eater, for Christ’s sake. The kid has chosen his side, and it’s the one that murders innocent people for no fucking reason and the boy will know that. His cousin joined, and another married one, and Regulus Black will know exactly who Death Eaters are and what they stand for. He’s not begging to be saved. He’s probably a lost cause.

“If I die,” says Regulus, pulling himself upwards slightly, trying to make himself look older and more impressive, probably. Remus isn’t scared. “If I die, then hopefully what I will do is not in vain.

“Twat,” says Remus. “It’s going to be in vain, because we’re going to beat Voldemort.” 

As Remus exits, his boots stomping on the floor, leaving Regulus Black behind, he decides he no longer thinks the other boy is a spy. He isn’t subtle enough. What exactly he is, and what he’s doing lurking the halls of Hogwarts all the time, he has no fucking idea. Maybe he should talk to Dumbledore. Whatever he does, he should work out what Black’s interest in him is, if he isn’t recruiting Remus. 

He’s got NEWTs, he’s got his newly-reforming friendship with Sirius, he hasn’t got time for this shit.

—

Harry needs something more than this, Remus realises. He’s been sneaking out to Hogsmeade - honestly, Remus suspected he had the Map long before it was revealed to him - he knows something about Black, and he’s funnelling it into this Patronus in a way that isn’t at all helpful. That isn’t a James trait, and it isn’t a Lily trait, no, this is a Harry trait. This is maladaptive coping, isn’t that what Mr Potter had called it, about Sirius all those years ago, and it’s a Sirius trait. And a Remus one, too. Because for what it’s worth, Remus is funnelling his fear into entirely unhelpful directions, too.

“Butterbeer,” he says, putting two down on the small, slightly rickety table in his office, after they’ve shut the Boggart away for the night. “You’re doing well,” he adds.

“Not well enough,” says Harry. 

He’s Lily’s son, and Lily wouldn’t be happy with this, either. She wouldn’t care if she was thirteen, too young to be able to do this, she’d be wanting to anyway. And James had become an Animagus at fifteen, he’d be the same. And Harry was his own person.

“I can see why you think that,” says Remus. “I’ve never liked not being able to do things I wanted to.”

“Really?” Harry looks up from his butterbeer, suddenly less despondent. “What can’t you do, Professor?”

The answer is an awful lot of things, almost none of them appropriate for this conversation, and, anyway. it’s really more about spells, isn’t it? “I’ve never been much use at Shield Charms,” he settles for. “I’m not sure why, but I have some sort of block with the spell.” He does know why, but that’s neither here nor there. “And I struggled with this charm for a long time, you know.”

As did his godfather, he wants to say. Sirius’ Patronus had been the strongest of all of theirs when it bothered to leap from his wand. More often than not, it fizzed and puttered out. Sirius had never been able to sort through his thoughts. James and Lily didn’t have a moment’s trouble, casting their complimentary Patronuses with their hands joined. Regulus could cast one, too. He wasn’t relevant here, though, Regulus Black or his Patronus. He died.

“Really?” Harry asks again. “How did you manage it?”

“Some of it was practice,” says Remus, with a smile that’s supposed to convey that this isn’t what Harry wants to hear. “Some of it,” and this is the more interesting bit, “some of it was just about the strength of the memory, and of my own mind. I developed stronger happy memories, I think, and, crucially, I was able to separate out the happy memory from any part of any other memory, from anything else in my mind that may taint it.”

“Compartmentalisation,” says Harry. “Hermione was talking about that.”

“You should listen to her,” Remus advises. “She’s a very intelligent witch.”

“She’s saved my life more than once.”

“Those are the sort of friends you should hang on to,” says Remus, and takes a gulp of butterbeer, more to hide his emotions on that sentence rather than because he’s thirsty. He had those friends, the friends who’d saved his life, and he’d let them be killed, all of them except the one. “Keep them close.”

What other advice could Remus give? Check your friends constantly for signs of treachery? Don’t let them die?

“I will, Professor.” Harry fiddles with the wrapper the bottle. “Professor? Do you think the Dementors will stay here until they catch Black? If I’m at risk, if he’s not caught by the time I go back to the Dursley’s in the summer, what happens then?”

“I don’t know,” says Remus. “The Ministry will provide you with protection, I’m sure, and I’m certain they wouldn’t station Dementors in a Muggle town.” He sees Harry’s face. “If you like, I can find you some information on defensive spells,” he suggests. “I can’t encourage you to use them, of course, given the International Statue of Secrecy and the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Magic, the Ministry would have both of our heads if you cast them for fun, but for an emergency.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

They talk about Quidditch, Remus demonstrates a couple of charms Harry’s struggling with, and Harry tells Remus a story about Ron, Lavender Brown and a puffskein in Care of Magical Creatures. Remus laughs at the way he tells it. They’re relaxed, happy, Harry waving his arms around as he does an impression of Draco Malfoy with the Hippogriff, and Remus tells a story of his own, of he and his friends and the time they decided to steal a Hippogriff. It’s without names, of course, but when, if, Harry knows the connection, Remus hopes he’ll look back on this story. And then, when Harry leaves, he gets angry.

He should have always been talking to Harry like this. He should be able to tell that story with the names, and others; he should be able to tell Harry of the time James decided to try and fly to Edinburgh to buy a birthday present for Lily, of the time he and James and Peter had smuggled fifty crates of fireworks into the Great Hall and let them off to celebrate the end of OWLs. He should be able to tell stories that involve Sirius without feeling a punch to the gut. 

He shouldn’t have to remember all of them. He should be having them here, to tell the stories with him to argue about how they were told. James and Peter, Lily, Sirius, Regulus.

But that’s life. Remus has to work with what he has.

And when did Black become Sirius again, anyway?


	5. Secrets

Remus Lupin meets the first Dementor of his life when he’s seventeen years old, on the hills just outside of Hogsmeade. He isn’t, strictly speaking, supposed to be here. The rules of students going to the village explicitly state they have to remain in the village, and Remus would know that rule, because he’s had detention over it before. But here he is, halfway up a hill leading to a cave system that James is convinced contains treasure, and no amount of explaining that they’re seventeen and treasure hunting is beneath them will change the fact that they’re going. The landscape is cold and dreary, there’s no sign of any caves yet, and, of course, there’s a Dementor.

It hangs three or four feet in the air, and it doesn’t appear to notice them at first. James, in front, starts frantically signalling for them to turn and leave, and maybe it’s the extra movement that alerts it, or maybe it’s the fear that Remus can smell rising off all of them. Including him. They’ve covered the basics of Dementors, of course, in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Remus took three pages of notes. He can picture his own scrawly handwriting telling him what to do if he encounters one. He’s practiced the spell, haven’t they been training themselves to join the Order, but the reality is something else. The reality is the fear flooding him.

James is the first to act. “Expecto Patronum!” he shouts, taking a step back and throwing the spell at the Dementor with almost physical force. It does nothing. The Dementor approaches. “Expecto Patronum!” he shouts again, and, for the first time ever, a stag bursts forth from his wand. It charges the Dementor, lowering it’s silver horns, and it shatters on contact. James just tries again.

The rest of them leap forwards to help, but they don’t really know what they’re doing, this group of boys. James’ stag leaps into being and shatters a few more times, Sirius and Peter produce little, and the Dementor still approaches. The cloak shifts around it, and it raises a hand, reaching out towards them

Remus tries to remember something happy, tries not to let anything else in, and he produces something, too, when he hasn’t even made mist in their practices. He knows what it is, but he can’t let that ruin the moment, and his fluffy, four-legged Patronus joins James’ stag, and this time, side by side, they drive the Dementor away. Where it goes, Remus doesn’t know, but it isn’t here. He looks around at his friends. James stares at his wand as if it cast the Patronus by itself. Peter is pale and shaking. Sirius kicks a rock.

“Let’s go back to the village,” Remus says. They all follow. In silence they walk down the hill, following the narrow path in single file, Remus in the lead now. James, at the back, can’t seem to stop checking over his shoulder. Remus must be doing the same thing, given that he keeps seeing James do it.

“Fucking Voldemort,” says Sirius. “It’s him, I know it’s him. It’s his fault. There shouldn’t be a Dementor in Hogsmeade. 

“The Ministry controls the Dementors,” says James, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He still has his wand out, he’s still looking at it like it can work by itself. “That’s what my dad says.”

“The Ministry could be lying,” says Peter. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

The Ministry says half of the attacks aren’t down to Voldemort. The Ministry denies that Inferi have been sighted in Cornwall, Norfolk, Pembrokeshire. The Ministry talks about gas leaks and innocent Muggle causes of death when families of them are found slaughtered. The Ministry might well cover up loose Dementors.

“It’s Voldemort,” says Remus. He wants to believe, as James seems to want to, that it’s a rogue Dementor, or that the Ministry’s sent it here to keep order, but that’s a load of rubbish. The Ministry wouldn’t use a Dementor as a sentry. They’re dangerous. He wants to dismiss Sirius’ words as conspiracy theory. “It’s got to be Voldemort.”

They sit in the Hogs Head, because the Three Broomsticks is full of students laughing and joking and unaware of or able to ignore the encroaching danger, and they mostly sit in silence. James and Peter try to talk about Quidditch. Sirius tips his chair back, pint of mead in his hand, angry and silent. His brother is a part of this, if they accept that this is Voldemort.

“What if it comes down here?” Peter asks. “We sent it away, but it might come back.”

“There’s enough people here that can drive it away,” says James, draining his mead. 

“What if there’s more than one?”

“That’s why we’ve got to defeat Voldemort,” says Sirius, speaking for the first time since they’d walked down from the hill. “Because defeating one Dementor doesn’t mean shit. We’ve got to stop the whole thing. And that’s Voldemort.”

They’ve always been intending to join the Order, to fight against Voldemort in whatever way they can, but this feels like a turning point. It feels like the point where it goes from being abstract - four boys, legally men, yes, but boys, hurling spells at one another in a secret passageway - to real. They’ll be seeing Dementors again, if Sirius and Peter have the right of it and Voldemort’s controlling them. They’ll be fighting real Death Eaters, not the Death Eaters-in-training in the halls of Hogwarts. Consequences will be more than detention.

James and Peter nod. “Absolutely,” says James. “We’re all in, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” says Peter. His little eyes are steely. He raises his glass in the air. “To the end of Voldemort,” he says, quietly, because this pub isn’t the most savoury. “To the fight.”

“To the fight,” say Remus, James and Sirius, clinking glasses, and Remus feels a chill like there’s a Dementor here, too.

—

Remus avoids the lake. He swaps patrolling duty with other teachers, offering to do Minerva’s hated sixth and seventh floor duty in favour of not having to go outside. Minerva eyes him carefully.

“I know this must be difficult for you,” she says. “I wonder, too, if there was something I could have done to stop all of this.”

“You couldn’t,” Remus replies. He tries to think of her like a colleague, not a teacher. “You remember what he was like, when we were at school. Once he was set on a course of action, that was it.”

“I can’t see how we could have expected it,” she says. “You’re not wrong, of course. And he seemed so against all of that. The amount of time I was forced to give him detentions in the corridors for fighting those he believed to be allied to You-Kn0w-Who, including his own brother, the way he left his family over their beliefs, well, you wouldn’t have assumed it to have been him.”

“No.” Remus has combed over Sirius’ behaviour a thousand times, maybe more, between the November of 1981 and now, twelve years later, and he hasn’t come up with much of any significance. “He was never quite right after his brother’s death.” He’d thrown himself into fighting Death Eaters with no care for his safety, he’d almost drank himself to death, once or twice, he’d been on a self-destruction streak like never before. Sirius had never known how to deal with his emotions in a healthy way. And then, almost a year to the day from the news of Regulus’ death, he’d stopped. He’d turned up with a different expression, and he’d learnt self-control. “There were clues, in hindsight. But we were all so paranoid.”

Minerva sighs. “As well we should have been. It was a dangerous time.” She puts a hand on Remus’ shoulder. “I’ll do the outside patrols. My memories, I expect, are somewhat easier to cope with than yours, should a Dementor threaten.”

“I’m not weak,” he says, feeling like a student again.

“I never assumed as such, Remus,” she says, kindly. “I just don’t see the point in expecting people to cope with more than they have to. It was a lot so young. I forget how young you all were.”

But Harry’s younger, Remus thinks, as he turfs students out from disused classrooms, broom cupboards and stairwells. Voldemort doesn’t care how old you are. Dementors care less. Harry’s worst fear is a Dementor, highly sensible, he fears fear most of all, the Boggart can tell. Remus’ is supposed to be the moon.

He’s interested to note that, usually, he’s turfing students out who seem to be trying to find some privacy for a pair of them, to put it delicately, or are gossiping or something, but now, he seems to be finding students doing entirely different things. He discovers the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan in a secret passageway on the sixth floor of the castle, and on closer inspection, they’re trying to cast a Patronus. He dispatches them back to their common room with the suggestion that they practice in his classroom on Sunday morning. A pair of Ravenclaws are casting Shield Charms on each other in one of the classrooms. 

“It’s in case Black gets back into the castle, Professor,” one of them says. 

“While I sympathise, it’s past curfew,” he says. “My classroom is free on Sunday afternoon.”

He can’t sleep that night. He’s not sure why now - nothing has changed in the world to trigger this, but he can’t sleep. The bedclothes feel like they’re strangling him. Remus pulls himself from bed. If he can’t sleep, at least he can do something vaguely useful. He’ll make a start on marking those first-year essays about the correct identification of dark creatures, that would be useful, or else he’ll go over his notes on curses for the fourth-years tomorrow.

He shambles into his office, dressing-gown drawn around him, his boots on because it isn’t carpeted in here. He didn’t draw the curtains, so moonlight slips in through the window. A half moon, not dangerous. He goes to draw them anyway, as the sight of the moon has never filled him with joy, and the moon, it turns out, isn’t the thing that makes his stomach drop. It’s a Dementor, the Dementor, he’s sure of it, and it stands alone on the edge of the Black Lake. Under the big oak tree, no, it hovers, it doesn’t stand. It hovers like it’s waiting for him.

The Dementor turns it’s head towards the castle, and it’s looking, whether it has eyes or not, it’s looking right at him.

Remus draws the curtains, staggering back, and, all attempts at work abandoned, goes downstairs and steals cake from the kitchens.

—

If someone had told Remus that Regulus Black had his own version of the Marauder’s Map, he wouldn’t be surprised. The kid has a knack for finding Remus when he’s alone, and Remus feels like he has his own personal stalker, dark-haired and brooding and Marked. 

“Fuck off,” he snaps, when, for the sixth time in a week and a half, he’s cornered by Regulus Black in a corridor. 

The irony with all of this is that he’s been stalking Regulus himself. He’s been watching him on the Map, whenever he can get hold of it, and making up less and less believable lies if he’s caught by one of his friends. The last time, he’d had to go and booby-trap the stairs to the fifth floor with James, because that was the only excuse he’d been able to concoct for why he was staring at a fourth-floor corridor for so long. Remus doesn’t know if ironic is the right word. Maybe ridiculous is.

Regulus only smiles.

“Fuck right off,” says Remus, making to push past. Regulus holds out his arm to prevent him, and Remus doesn’t push at it. He stands six inches off from it, eyeing it like it’s a venomous snake. 

“I will if you want me to,” says Regulus, with a smile. “Else, meet me by the lake tonight. By the big oak tree.” He smiles again, something Remus realises he wants to see again, and he turns. “Nine o’clock,” he says, over his shoulder, as he walks away. “I don’t wait.”

Why, Remus wonders, does Regulus Black want to meet him, of all people. It’s two nights to a full moon - most people would be wary of a werewolf at this point of the month. Most sensible people. But whatever Regulus Black is, he doesn’t know the moon cycle, or he doesn’t care, or he thinks he can take a werewolf. Whatever it is, Remus isn’t going to go. Is he?

Of course he goes.

He slips out the castle, borrowing James’ cloak again, a bag of Dungbombs smuggled under it. He sets them along three third floor corridors, tapping each one with his wand and a timing spell, then carefully seeds the Entrance Hall and the Great Hall. They’ll go off during breakfast, these ones, and the third floor ones about ten o’clock tomorrow morning. If asked, he’s going to be trapped in a broom closet by a patrolling Mrs Norris for the next few hours. He’s got the Map, so nobody can refute that claim.

With that, he slips out the side of the castle, through the door by the greenhouses Professor Sprout usually doesn’t lock until late, with fifteen minutes to spare. He’s got a couple of hours, by his estimate, as Sprout usually locks the door at about eleven, and if he’s after that, he knows how to pick the faulty padlock on the broom closet by the Ravenclaw stand, and there’s a window on the sixth floor that’s always open, on the Ravenclaw Tower side. It leads into a corridor that goes nowhere, just a few classrooms filled with files from old students and broken magical equipment, and from there, he can be back at Gryffindor Tower in under fifteen minutes. He has a back-up plan for that, too, in case someone’s shut the window, but that involves landing on the Astronomy Tower and any route from there goes past at least two teachers’ offices, so he’d rather not risk that.

Remus wonders what over-planning is a symptom of. Whatever it is, he decides he’s better not knowing.

He hides when he reaches the meeting spot. Regulus isn’t there, and, it’s entirely possible this could be some kind of ambush, trap or trick. Remus climbs the oak tree, he’s always been good with trees, covers himself in the Cloak, and waits. The Map, his wand, and two spare dungbombs sit in his pockets. 

Regulus is five minutes early. He’s alone, too. This seems less of a terrible idea immediately, although, Remus reminds himself, this is a meeting in the dark with a known Death Eater. The castle is out of earshot. On parchment, the best course of action is to stay in the tree, hidden here under James’ Cloak, wait it out until Regulus goes back in, and to pretend that he never came out here at all.

He wants to know why, though. Why he’s been invited out here, for a start. And why Regulus tracks him around the castle, or however he does it, why he turns up wherever Remus is alone. That’s without factoring in why Remus is behaving the way he is, because he’s been tracking Regulus too, he’s come out here, and he’s not leaving.

The moon, almost full, hangs overhead as Regulus Black stands five feet away from the tree. He’s not in their Hogwarts uniform, but dark blue robes, not a touch of Slytherin colour on him. He looks like Sirius much less every time Remus looks at him, and now, out of uniform and almost out of context, they bear only a passing resemblance to one another. Both Blacks are attractive, anyone with eyes can see that, whether they’re interested in men or not. And Remus is. He’s never been attracted to Sirius.

He isn’t sure when he became attracted to Regulus.

It’s this that makes him think he should leave, over and above the idea that it might be a trap. Which is bollocks, his rational mind knows that, why would fancying someone make him want to run more than the idea he might be killed? This is ridiculous. He should just throw a dung bomb down on him and run away, or hide up here until he leaves, or anything that isn’t going and talking to the Death Eater down below. Because he’s a Death Eater. Remus has to remember that.

Of course, being a Gryffindor and an idiot, he stuffs James’ Cloak away and jumps from the tree.

If Regulus is surprised by the way that Remus appears from above him, landing on the damp grass with a soft thump, he doesn’t show it. Remus straightens up. He’s landed on his feet; he always does with that sort of thing. 

“Good evening,” he says. For some reason, he holds out his hand for Regulus to shake. Regulus takes it, looking amused.

“Good evening,” he replies.

Remus waits. He didn’t call this meeting, he doesn’t have the first clue what Regulus wants, so he props himself up against the tree, trying to look nonchalant and unconcerned. He feels underdressed. His jeans and jumper have both seen better days, and he tries to resist the urge to pick at a loose thread on the bottom of the jumper. His mother had knitted this for him.

“You came,” says Regulus, almost circling Remus, and Remus feels like he’s stating the obvious. “I didn’t know if you would.”

“Neither did I,” says Remus. “If this is a trap, I won't hold Sirius back any more.”

“My brother would never hurt me,” says Regulus, arrogance in his voice. “He wants me to join him, not for me to die.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” 

“I know my brother as well as you do, I think.” Regulus walks a semi-circle around Remus, back and forth, like he’s considering him as prey. Remus isn’t scared. He’s got a wand, and he’s fast, and if it comes to it he knows how to fight like a Muggle. His heart beats faster, though, and he resists the temptation to wipe his hands on his jeans. 

“I’m not here to talk about Sirius.”

“No, you’re not. But you don’t know why you’re here, do you? I didn’t tell you why it is that you should bring yourself here, and, yet, here you are.”

“I’m not talking about Sirius, and I’m not joining Voldemort,” says Remus. 

“I don’t expect for you to do either of those things. I merely wanted to talk to you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Is that so unusual?”

Plenty of people want to talk to Remus Lupin. His friends, for a start, and Lily and Mary. Sometimes Marlene, Peter’s girlfriend, but that’s usually because she wants to know something about Peter. Girls who think Remus can ask Sirius out for them. Girls who want to ask him out, and who’ve somehow missed the whole ‘Remus Lupin is into boys’ rumour. Boys who think he’ll help them work out if they’re gay. Professor McGonagall, but that’s usually to give him detention or to try and get him to find the others, so she can give them a detention. The Arithmancy teacher, who seems to think he’s some sort of prodigy. He says none of that, because it’s an entirely useless information set for Regulus Black.

And because, yes, it’s bloody unusual that some Slytherin would want to have a fucking pleasant chat with him.

“Get to the point,” he growls.

Regulus falters, then. He doesn’t seem to know what the point is. He faces Remus, hands by his side, looking at the grass beneath his highly polished shoes. He’s the picture of pureblood wealth and poise, most of the time, and Remus Lupin, half-blood werewolf and general disaster, has reduced him to utter silence.

“Lost your nerve at trying to kill me?” Remus asks. 

Remus waits for a second, maybe two, after saying that, and then Regulus launches himself at him, a rush of blue robes and dark hair and pale skin, coming towards him bodily and at speed. There’s not enough time to react, because Remus’ first thought is to go for his wand, but Regulus is too close, too fast. So Remus starts forwards, instead, hands out in front of him. His hands collide with Regulus’ chest, but there’s too much momentum, and they both go backwards until Remus’ back is against a tree, Regulus’ hands are on his shoulders, and their faces are an inch away from one another’s. Remus scowls. Regulus blinks.

“Use your imagination,” Regulus advises. “Why am I here?”

His breath is hot on Remus’ face. He can practically feel the other boy’s heat beating. It might be dark, but he can see every fraction of an inch of Regulus’ face, and there’s nothing antagonistic in it. Neither of them have gone for their wands. Nobody’s punching anyone else. And this isn’t the typical movements of someone who just wants to talk. This is - oh fuck.

“You want to experiment.” Plenty of boys at Hogwarts have wanted this. A quick fumble in a broom closet, a snog in a bathroom, just something to work out if the urges they’re feeling are anything, or nothing at all. Remus isn’t interested in that.

“I don’t need to experiment. I know what I want. I know who I am.”

“You took Mirabelle Rosier to Hogsmeade for Valentine’s Day.” That shouldn’t be a point, but it is. It isn’t even like the pair of them have been seen together, outside of that.

“She did not have a date. It was polite to escort my cousin,” he says, with the emphasis on cousin, even though that’s a shit reason in the Black household, “to Hogsmeade, given that she was otherwise alone. Besides,” he adds, “even if I had, can’t a discerning wizard be interested whoever they wish? Can he not appreciate the beauty of the human form, however it may come?”

“You don’t know what you want,” says Remus, because this has happened before. He fell for it the first couple of times, but he’s wise now. He knows everything about the way wizards come to him, and the way that they avoid him in the hallways afterwards. He turns them down.

“I know what I want,” says Regulus, again. One hand still pinning Remus’ shoulder against the tree, he reaches up with the other and strokes his face. His hands are soft and gentle on Remus’ cheek. This is off the script. 

Remus could pull free at any time. He’s stronger than the other boy, and he’s got both hands free. All he’d have to do would be to shove him, hard and fast, away from him, and he could be back at the castle within a couple of minutes. Even with that knowledge, he doesn’t do it. He stays where he is, pinned to the tree, Regulus’ hand now reaching into his hair. He sighs. 

“Do you want this?” Regulus asks, his breath hot on Remus’ neck. “If you don’t, I’ll go. I won’t hold it against you. I’ll leave and that’s the end of this.”

Remus wants this. His hands reach for Regulus, going for his back, first, up and into his hair. He tries to pull Regulus’ head forwards and into him, but the other boy resists. He grins.

“You have to say yes,” he says. “I have to know you want this. I won’t do anything unless you want to.”

“Yes,” Remus says, because it’s the only thing he can say. “I want this.”

It’s nothing like he’s ever done before, when their lips meet. He’s kissed wizards before, he knows how it feels, except he doesn’t. He stops thinking fairly quickly. The bark of the tree presses into his back, but he’s not interested in that, he’s interested in the feel of Regulus’ lips on his, the movement of his hands, the way he can make the other boy sigh by Remus twisting his hands into Regulus’ hair.

“I can tell,” says Regulus, removing his mouth from Remus’, resting it by his neck. 

“Don’t you think I’ll ever stop fighting you. I’m against everything you stand for. I despise your views.”

“Yes,” says Regulus. “I know.” He licks at Remus’ neck, and he sighs, again. “You’ll join Dumbledore’s Order. We’ll fight each other in the end.”

“I’ll not change my plans for you,” he says, twisting a finger in Regulus’ hair, and smiling at the way it makes the breath come from him in a rush, the way it makes him nibble at Remus’ neck, now. “We’re going to be enemies. Maybe we already are.”

“We are,” says Regulus. “You’re with Dumbledore. I’m with the Dark Lord, aren’t I?” 

Maybe that’s why they’re doing this, maybe that’s part of the draw. Remus pulls his hands from Regulus’ hair, pushing them lower down his body, resting just at the top of his arse.

“Please,” says Regulus. “Please.”

“We should go back the castle. Two Prefects, outside past curfew. What would happen if we’re caught?”

“That is of no matter,” says Regulus, but even despite the words he’s used, he doesn’t sound anywhere near as posh as he usually does. “Please.”

“Really?” Remus slides his hand down and across the other boy’s arse, and, emboldened by the noise he makes against his neck, makes a grab at it. “No further than this,” he says, “not tonight. I don’t shag on the first night. I have to know it’s what you want. I have to know this isn’t a game. You have to come to me again and tell me what you want, and you have to be sure.”

But they’re going to, he thinks, as their lips meet again, urgent and hurried. He’s going to do this again, and he’s going to bury the stab of guilt that this is somehow disloyal, somehow treacherous. It’s not about politics, or about the way they see the wizarding world. Not everything has to be.

—

The Dementor is getting bolder. Remus charms his curtains shut after the sixth night he sees it under that oak tree, office and bedroom both. This raises an eyebrow from Minerva, when she finds them inoperable in the middle of the day. 

“I think it might have been a student,” says Remus. “I’m not sure what charm might reverse them.”

Minerva sighs. “I hope they’re giving you as much difficulty as you gave me,” she says. “It’d serve you right, you know.”

“It would,” Remus agrees, because there’s no point disagreeing with her. He was an utter shit most of the time at school.

“Something I’d never have told you then is how often I wanted to laugh,” she says. “Which of you was it, by the way, that enchanted Albus’ chair to sing each time he sat in it? It took six of us four weeks to resolve that, it was very clever spellwork.”

“James,” Remus admits. “I did about half the research, mind you, but it was his idea. You almost caught him at it, but Peter managed to convince you that Peeves had cursed his feet to tap-dance and you took him to the hospital wing.”

Minerva raises an eyebrow. “I had no idea that wasn’t the truth,” she says, the corners of her eyes creasing up into a smile. “He was very convincing.”

“He took two years of tap dancing lessons as a child.”

What’s supposed to be a meeting about some joint working for their sixth year classes turns into reminiscing with wine. Minerva’s left dabbing at her eyes, and, if Remus cried, he wouldn’t be far off that himself, but they’re laughing, too. It’s the same every time he thinks of his friends. He refuses to let what happened spoil the times they did have. 

Of course, they skim over the stories where Sirius plays a major part. He’s there, in the corners of all of them, occasionally referenced as part of ‘the four’, but they don’t name him. He's what blackens the memories, far more than the deaths of Remus’ friends. Their betrayer was there all along.

And yet Remus finds himself thinking about him more and more lately. The Sirius Black of his teenage years, handsome and clever and funny, with a winsome smile and endless energy. He wasn’t always like that, of course, he was moody and changeable, prone to disappearing off to skulk in corners of the castle, angry, at times. But they all had their faults and their quirks. Remus had done his share of hiding in corners, too.

He finds himself thinking about Regulus Black more, too.

“It must be difficult for you, returning here,” says Minerva. “It’s hard enough for those of us who taught them.”

“I have to choose to remember the times we did have,” says Remus, which is what he’d told Albus when he’d agreed to take the job, and Poppy, too. “I can’t go around the castle crying at every broom closet one of us hid in, or every place we exploded something.”

“You’d never get anything done. It seems to me you lot exploded half of the castle at some point or another.”

“James was aiming for sixty percent.” Sirius was aiming for ninety, but that was Sirius. 

Minerva laughs. “He was always an overachiever. It’s a shame we never got to see what he could have done, once he’d decided to set his talents to achievements over and above explosions.”

Remus pours them both more wine. He’s not a drinker to deal with his problems, no, that one was Sirius.

“And you,” continues Minerva. “You should have been able to do more as well. I should have visited more.”

“It wasn’t your fault. My problems would have existed with or without what Voldemort did.”

“Well, we should have pushed for legislation, then,” she says, firmly. “It won’t change overnight, you know, but I’m of half a mind to write to Cornelius and see if he won’t propose something. He’s a useless bag of air, of course, and I should know, I went to school with him, but he’s also as weak-willed as they come. I’m not above light blackmail, Remus.”

He smiles. He’s grateful, of course.

“Thank you.”

It won’t work. There’s no public appetite for it, and with Black on the loose, even less so. 

“Do you think Voldemort’s going to return?” Remus asks her. She puts her glass down at the change of subject.

“You-Know-Who? Merlin, Remus. I don’t know.”

“I’d like to believe he can’t.”

“I’d like to believe so too.” She picks up her drink again, taking a long mouthful. “Albus is cagey on the subject, which leads me to believe he thinks he can. After all that business with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” she shakes her head sadly, “I’m not prepared to rule anything out. And neither is Severus, for that matter. I know you don’t like him,” she says, peering him down over her glasses, “but he’s not who he was when you were at school. His Dark Mark grew stronger that year. It flickers, now, he says. He thinks Voldemort is in the country, moving around. He’s too weak to act, but he’s alive.”

“Maybe Black’s with him. Maybe he won’t come here at all.”

“Much as I don’t wish to see the pair of them reunited,” says Minerva, “that may well be the best outcome, in the short-term. Albus is making plans, of course. He wants to seek them out in the summer himself.”

“Will he re-form the Order?”

“Not in the moment, he says. He thinks it will provoke panic, and, most likely, scupper any kind of relationship he has with Fudge.”

“I’ll be there when he does,” Remus promises. “This isn’t what James and Lily and Peter died for.” It isn’t what Regulus died for, either, but he doesn’t say that. That’s still a secret. He’s a little drunk, he’s certainly told Minerva more than he planned to about the origins of some of those incidents at school, and his problems, but Regulus Black was a secret.

—

Secrets are the order of the day in 1978. Remus meets Regulus, two or three times a week, all of them in secret, of course. They have a routine. He takes the Map, lays an alibi prank, and goes to the meeting point. He comes back, and denies he’s done anything except charm all the portraits to salsa or something.

James and Lily huddle together at every opportunity, hands joined more often than not. James has always lived without secrets, so nothing that goes on between them is one, exactly, but this is a life outside of the Marauders and Quidditch. It’s different.

Sirius is angry. His brother is up to something. He stalks Regulus with his spare time, poring over the Map to work out what he’s up to. Easter meant a series of raids by Death Eaters, and Frank Longbottom, at a party at the Potter’s, says he’s very sorry, but he thinks he saw Regulus in the middle of it. Sirius has eleven detentions the first week back, all for attacking Slytherins in the corridors. He’s planning something, and he won’t tell the others.

Peter stands alone, lost and confused without his friends.

James gets angry at Sirius.

Sirius punches James.

Remus tries, he tries to pull everyone together, he and Peter together. Lily tries, too. Dumbledore reminds the school of the importance of remaining united. But how can they be united when people who’re in this school are wielding wands against Muggles in their spare time? Dementors are sighted in Hogsmeade again.Voldemort is a spectre, haunting them, he’s the fear of the Dark Mark in the sky above his house. In the hospital wing, after a full moon, Remus watches a column of students coming in, wheedling Calming Draughts and Dreamless Sleep Potions from the Matron. He watches as students are removed from lessons to the office of their Head of House, and then they come back, two weeks later. He reads the newspapers, even though every time he does all he wants to do is set them on fire. 

James and Sirius broker a truce. They peer at the Map together, faces set, looking for anyone who’s on their own in the corridors. They, the four of them, make it their mission to make sure nobody walks around the castle alone. They scout the corridors for groups of first years, they crash into fights that begin. Professor McGonagall stops giving them detentions for it.

“I don’t think you should be having to do this,” she says, “but I can’t deny it isn’t necessary.”

Remus meets Regulus. They crash into each other like it’s going to be torn away from them any moment, because, of course, it could be. They act like this isn’t what they want. They talk as if they’re only doing this for lack of any other choice, but, when it comes down to it, it’s what they want.

“Do you want to?” Regulus asks, his hands everywhere all at once.

“Are you sure you want to?” Remus asks, as he reaches inside Regulus’ trousers.

“Please,” they both say. “Please.”

Remus pretends he doesn’t feel like he shouldn’t want this.

—

Sirius Black has been back in the castle. He’s been in Harry’s dormitory. 

Remus stays calm in the staff meeting, sitting next to Minerva as she recounts what happened. He offers useful advice. He doesn’t tell anyone Black’s an Animagus. He does mention the secret passages again, and Albus assures them he’s got them all covered. They all sit around in their pyjamas and discuss security enchantments and improved patrols. Remus wants to punch a wall.

It’s four o’clock in the morning by the time the emergency staff has finished, and Remus knows he isn’t going to get any sleep. He thinks about going back to his rooms, but there’s nothing there except marking and ghosts and anger, so he goes to the secret passageways instead. He visits their favourite, first, the one that leads to the Honeydukes cellar. Surely Black wouldn’t be mad enough to use it.

He’s Black again. He’s endangered Harry.

Remus can smell him.

He runs down the passageway, wishing he’d dressed for this if he was going to do this, because his pyjamas are thin and his jumper has a hole in and he’s wearing shoes, yes, but they’re his ancient trainers. He doesn’t have time to go back. Not if there’s a chance he can find Black, and kill him.

Hogsmeade is dark still, silent and unmoving. He slips out from Honeydukes, no sign of Black, and creeps down the high street, hugging the sides of buildings and keeping to the shadows. He’s drawn his wand. Something rustles, the sign on the Three Broomsticks creaks, and Remus reacts to each of these noises like it’s Black coming to hunt him down. He stops to steady himself. Nobody got anywhere by jumping at leaves, did they, and he’s not going to let himself be caught distracted.

Where would Sirius go?

Not the Shack, surely, as Remus lights the tip of his wand and shines it down alleys and side-streets. There’s not an inch of movement down any of them. Maybe the hills. There’s caves up there, Remus remembers. They never found any treasure in them, no, but they found large, dry caves, ones with multiple entry and exit points and dark corners. The perfect hiding place.

Remus travels slowly, careful steps on the gravel path that leads from Hogsmeade into the hills. He fights back the memories of the last times he’s been here. They found their first Dementor here. They’d - no, he isn’t letting himself get sucked into the memories. 

“Come on,” he says to himself. “Get yourself together.”

The memories aren’t relevant.

He sights something up ahead. It’s on four legs, following the path ahead of him, dark and canine shaped. Remus extinguishes his wand and begins to run, fast as he can, up and up and up. He’s going to kill Black.

He slips, mud coats the leg of his pyjamas, he scratches his face on a sharp-needled bush. But he doesn’t have time for that; pushing himself to his feet he runs again, faster, as fast as he can, as the dog darts ahead. The moon goes behind a cloud, there’s no light this far up, and Remus runs anyway, willing that his feet will remember the way, keeping the gravel crunching under them. When it comes back out, when the moonlight covers the hills again, there’s nothing to see. The dog’s gone.

Remus turns on the spot, frantic, in case it could have slipped past him somehow. He runs on, reaching the summit of the hill and the beginning of the caves, dark and foreboding and impossible to find a dog in. He’ll try, of course he’ll try, but it’s futile. He kicks a rock. It skitters down the hill, and Remus crumples.

Black escaped. Black tried to kill Harry, and he escaped.

The dawn is threatening to break when Remus picks himself up and sets off back to the castle. He admits defeat. He’ll go back onto the grounds via the Shack, and he’ll plan better next time.

The Dementor is at the entrance to the Shack. Of course it is. It’s there, taunting him, and why him? He’s innocent. He’s trying to kill Black, he’s trying to bring the bastard to justice. He shouts something like that at it, but the words are jumbled, he knows this. He’s a walking disaster, in muddy pyjamas and a holey jumper, scratched up and brandishing a wand while he shouts at a Dementor. But the Dementor is mocking him. It’s hovering there and it knows what’s going on, it’s sucking up his anger and fear and distress, isn’t it, and it’s following him.

“Fuck off!” he shouts, brandishing his wand again, and it does nothing, because he’s tried it before and shouting swear words doesn’t work on Dementors. “Expecto Patronum!” he screams. For once it’s the wolf he lets out, and it charges the Dementor. “ _Expecto Patronum!_ ” He releases a second Patronus, even though the Dementor is retreating. It disappears into the wilds, and that leaves Remus without anything to do except sink to the floor, sit with his back to the Shack, and wonder how the fuck he got to this point.


	6. Pettigrew

They leave Hogwarts in a blaze of glory. They’re young and they’re clever and they’ve got their lives ahead of them. Remus isn’t naive enough to think that doesn’t mean they’ll live any longer than the end of the week. They join the Order, the four of them and Lily and Marlene. The first few missions are exciting. They’re doing something, they’re striking a blow against Voldemort.

Remus loses the entire of November 1978 to a curse on a remote Scottish island, an ambush gone wrong. He wakes in early December, Peter sitting by the bed doing the crossword in the Prophet. He’s lost a month, two days and three hours, and he’s still in bed two weeks later, with another couple to go. The Order’s unofficial hospital-slash-safe house is constantly busy, run like a tight ship by Dorcas Meadowes, and nobody’s allowed to be bored. Remus finds himself on research duty, even though he’s bedbound. 

He researches counter-curses, tries to map Death Eater activity, looks into financial records, and then, he gets a stack of books on Dementors. They’re fascinating at first.

“How’re you doing?” James asks. He’s lost most of the bones in his arms, and sits on the edge of Remus’ bed with them hanging by his side, wincing every so often as the Skele-Gro he’s taken does it’s work. “Merlin’s ballsack, this hurts.”

“It’s supposed to,” says Remus. “It’s supposed to teach you not to get the bones cursed out of you.”

“Minor accident,” says James, trying to wave his arm dismissively. It flops like a salmon. Remus laughs. “Not that there isn’t disadvantages,” he says. “Lily and I had plans to…”

“No, thank you,” Remus interrupts. 

“Young love,” says Dorcas. “So romantic. Here’s your potions, Lupin. Potter, stop it. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but stop it.”

“I’m going to propose to her,” James says, looking wistful.

“You’re eighteen,” Remus reminds him. 

“And I know what I want. Anyway, look at us. We could all die tomorrow. I want to know I lived my life, you know.”

Remus knows.

“Wise words, Potter,” says Dorcas. “Aren’t you seeing someone, Lupin?”

“No.” He’s shagged Caradoc Dearborn once, in the summer, which is probably what Dorcas is referring to, but that was never ‘seeing someone’. It was just seeing someone naked. He’s not seen someone in that way since he left Regulus Black behind at Hogwarts, and that was never anything, either. “Not really interested right now.”

“Ah, fair enough,” says Dorcas. “Loathe as I am to make you work, given you’re still firmly in recovery, but Dumbledore says the Dementor stuff is top priority. Potter, be a dear and don’t be a distraction, okay?”

“Be a deer,” mutters James, as she leaves. “Hilarious. I’d try it if I didn’t think I’d go tits over antlers.” He wobbles his arms. “D’you think hooves are made of bone?”

“Keratin,” Remus tells him. “Now help me with this research, or shut up. You can help process my thoughts.”

They go through the books, and Remus takes the notes, scribbling and turning pages as James reads aloud. Dementors have souls. They can understand basic commands, but they’re motivated by fear, really, and they’ve got no loyalty except to their own desire for feeding on the despair of others. They’ve defected from Azkaban before, Remus finds, but the Ministry covered that up. 

“Voldemort can offer them more than the Ministry can,” says James. He tries to raise his arm to turn a page himself, but the comedy in his arms has disappeared. “This all confirms what Dumbledore and Moody think, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” says Remus, who’s deep in another tome already. “This theorises that the better nature of one can be appealed to, if you can separate it from the pack. But how do you do that?”

“Beats me.” James swears, then shudders. “This reckons Dementors are corrupted souls. That’s it. Nothing more to them than a soul powered by vengeance and a taste for fear.”

“That can’t be right,” says Remus. “There must be something more to them than that.”

“I don’t want to get close enough to find out,” says James. “Here, open me another book. This one just goes into terrifying detail about how a soul can be corrupted. Fucking hell. There’s pictures.” He closes his eyes until Remus shuts the book, catching enough of a glimpse of the pictures to know why James wouldn’t look. They’re not wimps. They’ve just seen enough.

He has nightmares that night. A single, lonely Dementor glides just out of reach, following him. He flits between wolf and human. Neither form can get it to go, and it does nothing except hang in the air and remind him of his fear. He wakes in a sweat.

—

Officially, teacher are required to patrol the corridors four nights a week. Remus patrols nightly. He does a loop of the castle, the Marauder’s Map in his pocket, and every five minutes, he ducks into a broom cupboard and inspects it, looking for any signs of trouble. He takes points, even though that isn’t going to deter half of them, he sends them back to their common rooms, even though Black got into Gryffindor Tower, so them being there doesn’t make them any safer. He checks for Black. He must check for the name Sirius Black on the map a hundred times a day.

He begins to have nightmares again. Sirius Black lurks in them, Sirius Black creeping around the castle with a Dementor at his side. Dementors don’t go into the castle. They’re not allowed.

Remus checks the map. He sees another name that isn’t meant to be there. He’s sure it says Peter Pettigrew, out on the grounds, by the tree to the Shack. Remus tries to run and hold the Map, but that doesn’t work, so he shoves it into his pocket, traverses corridors and the Entrance Hall and the grounds. When he gets there, there’s no Pettigrew. Nothing. He scans the Map again, because the Map doesn’t make mistakes. Does it? They did the charms so many times. 

Remus shakes his head. He must be imagining it. That’s the only explanation. 

Peter Pettigrew is dead. 

—

There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and by the end of 1978 they’re all crossing it on a regular basis. 

Remus fights Regulus Black. They meet in the confusion of an attack on Diagon Alley; Remus trying to hold a side-street with Fabian Prewett at his side, Regulus storming it with handful of pals. They skid to a stop, the four Death Eaters, and, despite their masks, Remus knows which one he is immediately.

“I’ll kill you,” he warns. He’d promised that he’d never stop fighting for his cause. Regulus isn’t going to stop fighting for his. And Remus thinks he’s ready to die for it, if it comes to that. Is Regulus? He doesn’t know. 

Fabian steps fowards, challenging the Death Eaters to attack. The one that’s Regulus Black falters for just a second, and Fabian fires first. They’re outnumbered, four to two, and that makes the fight the fiercer. It’s all Remus can do to hang on. He casts every offensive spell he can think of, shouting them as they come to mind, but not the ones that could kill. It’s Fabian that kills one of them, and the others flee, and Fabian and Remus stand over the body.

“Not a clue who he is,” says Fabian. This isn’t his first kill. “Best leave him for the Ministry to find.”

Remus nods. They’re not supposed to be here. A member of the Order who kills, even in self-defence, could be tried for murder. It’s been threatened before, and a case almost made it in front of the Wizengamot. There’s that and there’s ethical considerations for not killing, after all, they’re supposed to be on the side of the light, but it happens, sometimes. That doesn’t make Remus feel any less sick. It doesn’t prevent him picturing it being Regulus’ body.

Without saying anything else they leave, darting up towards the Alley proper, and they rejoin the main fight. Remus tries not to look for Regulus. He’s a Death Eater. Whatever they had is nothing compared to the sides both of them have chosen.

“I hate this,” he tells Peter, as they both sit clutching tumblers of Firewhisky that night. Two Order members are dead, a shopkeeper and two bystanders, too. “I hate that we have to do this.”

“So do I. It isn’t fair, is it?” Peter downs his drink, and pulls a face. “It’s important though. We’ve got to fight them. Someone’s got to.” He doesn’t even look like he believes his own words. 

—

Minerva takes Remus aside and tells him to get more sleep.

“We’re all worried about Black,” she says, in that tone that’s supposed to be kind but firm. “It isn’t just your job, you know.”

Remus knows that. Black’s a spectre for all of them, now, and even those who didn’t take it seriously after the first break-in are now on guard, too. Minerva is also patrolling nightly, he can see that on the Map, and Flitwick offers to add extra protective charms across all the common room entrances. Fudge appears one Tuesday afternoon, sequestering himself into the Headmaster’s office with Albus. Remus hides in a broom closet to overhear some of their conversation, squashed in amongst two Cleansweep Fours, battered Nimbus 1000, and what looks suspiciously like half a Quaffle.

“Albus, be reasonable!” says Fudge, as they pass. “Dementors can’t act outside the control of the Ministry! The public won’t stand for their removal from Hogwarts!”

“The Dementors are only as loyal as they wish to be, Cornelius. Much like you or I.”

“I won’t have you spreading rumours!” blusters the Minister, and the footsteps come to a stop, not far from where Remus is hiding. He shrinks into the shadow as much as his frame will allow. He’s not sure why he thinks this is a good idea, hiding like he’s seventeen again and running from Filch, but he needs to have information. Nobody tells him anything about Black. Albus says he’s handling concerns about rogue Dementors. And Remus has to know. 

“I am the one reassuring my staff that this undertaking is entirely safe,” says Albus. “If you wish for me to do that, then, one would think, it would be polite to at the least be honest with me.”

“Honest? Of course I’m honest! The Dementors are within the Ministry’s control and that is final!”

“I hope you’re correct on that account, Cornelius. It would be quite worrying if one was to break free of the Ministry’s influence, would it not be?”

“It’s as if you think they have personalities!”

“And how do we know that they do not? They have souls, after all. There’s a body of thought that a soul is indeed all that they are.”

“Preposterous!”

“Come, Cornelius,” says Albus, and the footsteps restart again. “I can see that I have lost this particular argument on this occasion, but, at least we are in agreement about…”

Remus loses the conversation at this point as the footsteps and the words fade away, but he stays where he is, the flat, sad looking deflated Quaffle taking up the space next to him. He swears under his breath. 

He’s learnt nothing about Black, but he remembers something about Dementors. Because he’s the one that did that research for Dumbledore, him and James. A soul is all they are. Dementors have personalities, they can have independent thought. He’s been teaching close to that to his students, all year, he’s been watching the Dementor that follows him. Maybe this is a way to catch Black.

Which is how he finds himself out in the grounds at ten o’clock at night, searching out a particular Dementor.

It, with the benefit of even the smallest amount of hindsight, is not one of his better plans.

His Patronus walks by his side as he patrols the outer edges of the grounds, the wolf padding along the air in silence. He’s not sure what his alibi is for being out here, hunting Dementors, late at night. He’ll deal with that later. The first bunch he finds, ominously hovering by the main gates, aren’t the right ones. Given that they all look the same, all menacing black cloaks and the rising feel of panic, he doesn’t know how he’s going to tell except based on gut instinct. Besides, this one is always alone. 

Remus and the wolf carry on, past a second clump of them as he approaches the lake. 

They’re dead, he remembers. Lupin, I’m sorry, James and Lily are dead. Moody stands in front of him, and if the grizzled old Auror would cry, it would be now, and Remus is crying, he knows that. He picks up his mug and hurls it at the wall. Moody doesn’t blink. Let it out, son, let it out.

Yes, they’re dead, but that was years ago. It’s a memory. It can’t hurt him now. It’s only the Dementors, and these aren’t the right ones, either. His wolf snaps at their cloaks, they move away. The Dementor he’s looking for only brings up memories of Black.

And Regulus. But Regulus is dead, too, Regulus died before even James and Lily, and Remus can’t have any of them back.

He walks into a cold room in the basement of St Mungo’s. The light is harsh and bright, and he lowers his eyes to keep from blinding himself. Peter’s mum is by his side. She never cared about him when he was alive, he wasn’t as clever as his sisters, and he wasn’t a girl, but she’s here now, playing the grieving widow. The Healer’s got nothing to show them. It’s a finger in a box, that’s all that’s left of Peter.

But no, that’s a memory too, and that one can’t hurt him, either. Peter’s dead, he’s gone, Remus can’t get him back. James and Lily and Peter and Regulus, all of them gone, all of them lost to him. He has to keep Harry safe from Black. He has to get his revenge.

Remus finds it. It’s under the oak tree. He should have tried here first, shouldn’t he, he should have known. 

“I want you to help me,” he says. “Please.”

The Dementor turns. If it had eyes it would be looking at him with interest, Remus thinks, but it doesn’t. It hovers in place, cloak shaking in a non-existent breeze.

“I know the Ministry wants you to find him,” he says. “I know you’ll all be trying. But, please. You need to find Sirius Black.” He pauses. “I’ll give you all I know,” he says.

The Dementor nods. If Dementors can nod. It glides closer. It stops; the wolf stands between him and it, watching and guarding.

“I’m trusting you,” says Remus. He dismisses his Patronus.

He remembers everything. If it’s got Sirius in it, if it’s tinged with any sadness or fear at all, it swims in the front of his mind. Remus screws up his face, tensing his shoulders, willing himself to allow this. If it catches Black, it’s the right thing to do. And then it’s the memories of Regulus.

“No,” he says. “No. That isn’t the deal.”

But he can’t summon a Patronus. He’s forced to remember all of it.

The Dementor retreats. Remus staggers to his feet, not remembering when he landed on the floor, locates his wand, straightens up. He conjures his Patronus again. It shakes and wobbles and fades from existence the first three times, but the fourth one is there, pale and anaemic and uncooperative, but it’s there. The Patronus looks at him reproachfully. Remus wants to tell it that this isn’t his fault.

“That wasn’t the deal,” he says, to the Dementor. It, of course, says nothing. “You had no right,” he continues, his voice stronger. “Regulus Black is nothing to do with you. He’s not to blame for his brother. That’s private grief.” 

The Dementor does nothing. What else did Remus expect?

“Fuck off,” he says, turning to leave. “Fuck off and kill Black.”

—

If 1978 was full of secrets and open warfare, 1979 is distrust and quiet, brooding fear. It’s skulking around in the darkness. It’s brief moments of joy, usually eclipsed by someone dying.

James and Lily get engaged. They all get plastered, of course, at Order Headquarters. The next day Moody looses an eye, and Paulie Fenwick dies. Remus watches that happen, he sits next to Paulie in St Mungo’s and he promises to keep an eye on his brother, Benji, for him. To make him leave the Order. To keep him alive.

Pete and Marlene move in together. It’s two days later that Marlene’s mother is cornered in Diagon Alley, and narrowly escapes. Peter’s mother writes to disown him; Marlene’s a half-blood.

Sirius looks like he wants to smash something. 

Sophie and Alec Bell announce that they’re going to have a baby. The Order gets plastered again in celebration. They wait a week for their karma this time. James believes it isn’t coming, that, finally, they have some good news that isn’t overshadowed by the war.

Regulus Black kills Alec Bell one week and one day later. Sirius and Remus are there, James, too, and they can’t save Alec, they can’t do anything except remain alive themselves.

Sirius isn’t seen for a week. James, Lily and Peter unearth him in Cornwall, the wreckage of a Death Eater hideout around him. Smoke and flames and debris, and Sirius, burnt and sobbing.

Remus should be there, he should be rescuing Sirius from himself, too, but he isn’t.

He’s in a darkened room, location unknown, time of day, unknown. There’s no natural light here, just him and Benji Fenwick. Benji groans in his sleep. Remus couldn’t make him leave the Order, and now, they’re here, and all that shit he promised Paulie is in vain. There’s no natural light, so there’s no route to the sky, so there’s no way of knowing when or if the full moon will rise. Remus paces. His leg’s broken, but he paces somehow anyway.

He’s in no mood to see Regulus Black, and yet that happens anyway.

“Fuck off,” he says, when the door opens, and Regulus slips in. He’s dressed in the black of Death Eater robes, and has his wand in his hand. Remus reckons he could punch him and get the wand. He starts forwards, but his leg collapses under him. “Fuck off,” he repeats, from the floor.

“You’re injured,” says Regulus. He flicks his wand, and a tray of food skims alone the floor into the room, depositing itself into a corner. With that done, he glances around, then kneels down next to Remus. “It’s broken.”

“And who do you think did it?”

“Yaxley. I was there, you know.”

“Good for you. Defending Voldemort like a good little Death Eater. How many of us did you kill?”

“None. Relax.” Regulus taps Remus’ leg with his wand and mutters a spell. The pain subsides. “You ought to wear it strapped up for two days,” he says, “but rest it, yes?”

Remus wants to tell him to fuck off, but he doesn’t. He grunts, instead.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he says.

“You’re a Death Eater.”

“I’m not who you think I am.” He looks down at Remus, and there’s something there that reminds Remus of who they were to each other before. They never defined it, they never put a label on it, but they were something to one another. Regulus’ face is thinner than it was at Hogwarts, pinched looking, his eyes less bright. 

“Who are you, then?”

“Regulus Black.” He reaches out and puts his hand on Remus’ face, a soft, gentle stroke of his cheek. “You’ll work it out,” he says, and he leans in and kisses Remus’ forehead. He gets up and goes without another word, and Remus can’t call out anything other than a litany of swear words and insults, but he does it anyway, and he hopes Regulus knows what he means. 

Remus isn’t sure what he means. He sits in the darkness and contemplates it, listening to Benji grunt and groan and snore.

Some amount of time later, six meals later, Regulus Black returns, muttering frantically in botched Welsh, and busts them out of their prison.

—

The Dementor isn’t ever there any more. Remus unsticks his curtains and looks for it, every night, but it doesn’t return to the spot under the oak tree. It’s impossible to ascertain if this means that Remus’ plan has worked, or if it’s coincidence, or if the Dementor is now using this information to orchestrate a plot against Remus himself, perhaps with the Minister. He chooses not to think about it. The best case scenario is that Black turns up dead, and the worst is that the Minister turns up to have him put down for being a dangerous dark creature, and the highest likelihood is nothing at all. Remus gets on with his life, as much as it is.

“The Minister has upped the price on Black’s head,” says Minerva, at lunchtime. Remus pretends he’s busy with a textbook.

“I can’t see how that will help matters,” says Sprout. “The general public are terrified of him. My brother works in the Ministry, and they get fifty-odd calls a day anyway, and all of the sightings are useless.”

“They have to be seen to be doing something,” Flitwick adds. “Fudge will be worried about his polls.”

“He needs to kill him, then,” says Snape, darkly. 

“Do you really think that’s the right thing to do, Severus?” asks Minerva. “It seems far too final.”

“He killed twelve Muggles and my best friends.” Remus slams the textbook shut. “He deserves death at the least for what he did. I’d kill him myself.”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “And I thought we’d never agree on a single thing.”

“Remus!” says Minerva, in shock. “Don’t you believe in rehabilitation?”

“Not for him.” Remus has thought about this. It isn’t like he hasn’t taken a life before. He’s killed a Death Eater, in the war. He’d wanted to be sick, yes, as he’d watched the man fall from the building as Remus’ spell collapsed it, and he hadn’t meant to do it, but Janus Selwyn had killed fifty Muggles. “Black had his chance.”

Black deserves to die, because he did all of that, and he’s had twelve years in Azkaban, and he’s not learnt. He’s not changed.

“He’s still trying to kill Harry,” Remus adds, standing up from the table. “I’m done.” He hasn’t eaten more than a mouthful. Minerva protests as he leaves, she’ll be sending something with a house-elf next, always far too concerned that he isn’t eating, isn’t sleeping, but there’s no point in that if Harry isn’t safe.

It isn’t revenge, Remus decides. But if James and Lily and Peter and Regulus didn’t deserve to live, then why does he? He always decided he’d be better than wanting to kill people in retribution. He wouldn’t sink to Black’s level. He should be better than this.

But he isn’t, and he shouldn’t miss a fucking Dementor, either.

—

Remus knows this is wrong. The guilt threatens to overwhelm him as he waits in the corner of the dingy Muggle pub, fifteen minutes early, sipping at a pint of bitter in a smudged glass. It’s a distraction, the beer, rather than any desire to drink, and a cover. The pub is full of people like him; tired looking men in dull, workworn clothes drinking alone or in pairs, quiet. The football plays on a radio in the corner, where the only group of men cluster around, in their red Nottingham Forest football shirts. Remus has always been for Cardiff City, himself. There’s occasional yells and cheers from the group, Forest are winning, they’re up one-nil. He thinks they’re playing Aston Villa, or perhaps Everton.

Regulus slides in ten minutes early. His Muggle clothes stand out, of course they do, of course the man would have no idea how to dress for this place. Remus downs his pint and intercepts him.

“You can’t stay here looking like that,” he says. Forest score as they leave the pub.

“I wear the same clothes you do.”

“No, you don’t.” Remus steers Regulus down past the bus stop, onto a quieter street. “You’ve spent too much money to blend in here. Normal people dress like this.” He indicates his own clothes - brown corduroy trousers, a battered tweed jacket. Regulus wears a suit, one that would be more at home in a rich man’s office than a working man’s pub. It’s cream and obviously expensive, down to the glimmering cufflinks at his wrist. “You’re a walking mugging victim, like that.”

Remus checks over his shoulder, pulls him into an alley, and Apparates.

“And this is where?” Regulus asks, brushing imaginary dirt from himself. 

“I live here,” Remus replies. He stomps ahead and opens the door. “Inside.”

As if it was all this was for, Regulus’ hands are on Remus the moment the door clicks shut, pulling the pair of them together. This isn’t right. It feels right, he wants it to be right, but it isn’t.

“No,” he says. “Stop.”

Regulus backs away instantly. “Don’t you want this?” he asks.

Remus isn’t sure what he needs to say to make this right. All he knows, at this moment, is that it isn’t, it’s wrong, this can’t happen like he wants it to. He takes two steps away. Regulus looks defeated. No, he doesn’t, he looks like he’s been betrayed.

“I’m not who you think I am,” he says, pulling up his left sleeve. Remus doesn’t need to see it. “I’ve never been. Look.”

“I know who you are,” says Remus. He isn’t looking. “You’re a Death Eater. You fight for Voldemort.”

“I’m not.” He’s approaching Remus. Remus steps away, staring Regulus in the face, keeping eye contact, not looking at his arm. “I am. But I’m not fighting for him, look, you’ll see.”

“You took his Mark. I’ve done my research, Regulus, you can’t take that sort of magic without wanting it, without being loyal to him.”

“Wanting it, yes, I wanted it. Loyal, no. It tries, though, it tries to keep me loyal, I’ve killed people on his orders, it makes me. I didn’t want it because I wanted to be loyal.”

“Why, then?” Remus looks. He doesn’t want to look, but he does, and it’s a mangled mess. The once clear skull and snake are corrupted, the lines blurred and messy, making the Mark a scrawled mockery of what it had been. “Fuck,” he says.

“It’s been doing that for six months.” Regulus is pale and shaking. “It hurts worse than ever.” Last year, he’d always looked older than his years. Now he looks the boy he is, seventeen and terrified, out of his depth and alone. “It’s going to kill me,” he says. “I’m certain of it.”

“How do you know?” 

“You’re not the only one who does research.” He can barely cover the Mark, his hand is shaking so much, and Remus wants to hug him. But he can’t. He has to know all of this. “It’s a curse. It’s a type of curse you can’t remove. It binds us to him, he can summon us at will, he can make us hurt through it. Rosier thinks he can kill us through it, but I think that’s rumour. And it keeps us loyal. I don’t know enough about it to know how, but, somehow, it makes us act the way that he would wish us to, were he there. We can act against it, but there’s consequences, and I think he knows, Remus. I think he knows I fight it. I’ve convinced him I’m just weak, that’s why I struggle.”

“And he’ll kill you for weakness?”

“No. Perhaps. I think,” he stutters over his words, “I think the curse can kill me if I do not act like it wishes me to. I think it’s doing so, slowly. It’s giving me a chance to repent.” He sounds stronger suddenly, and he draws himself up. He’s more like the old Regulus. “I do not intend to repent the way that Voldemort would want me to.”

“I see.” Remus doesn’t see.

“I’m not going to repent,” he repeats, as if he’s still trying to convince himself of this. “I won’t, because he’s the one that’s wrong. Voldemort’s wrong,” he continues, saying the name as if it’s venomous, “and I won’t be his any more.” He’s not shaking any more, he’s still pale, but he’s more like the boy Remus knew. His dark hair falls into his eyes, unkempt, and he glares out from under it.

Remus doesn’t know what to say.

“Won’t it kill you?”

That isn’t right; it isn’t the right thing to say at all. Because, as sure as Remus is that Voldemort will kill anyone who dares act against him, especially from amongst his own, it isn’t tactful. He shudders as he remembers the last defector they’d found, face down outside his family home. Dead. He doesn’t want to remember the details, but he does, anyway. And Regulus can’t die. He shouldn’t. He can’t.

“This or Voldemort,” he says, twitching his left arm. “One of the two. But it isn’t about that. This is more than any one of us, it always has been.”

Sirius subscribes to that view, too, Remus thinks. Another similarity between these - no, they’re not boys, they’re men. Wizards. Remus has never felt like he was right. The war is about more than all of them, and it’s about them too, it’s about saving each and every person that they can. Isn’t it? Lily agrees with him.

“No,” says Remus. “We’re going to save your life. You can’t die.”

—

Peter Pettigrew is alive. 

There he is, on the Marauder’s Map, loose in the grounds. He’s near Harry, he’s right within striking distance of Harry and his friends. They’re all bunched up together in the shadow of the Willow, of all the places, but the window from his office doesn’t open onto the Willow. Remus can’t see a thing from the window, only on the Map, and that tells him nothing except that Pettigrew is alive, and what in Merlin’s name does that mean? 

And then he sees Sirius Black, and Remus suddenly knows that, if nothing else, he has to run. Harry’s in danger.


	7. Spy

There’s a spy in the Order, Dumbledore thinks. This isn’t a surprise. Sirius looks like he’s known it all along, and Peter’s quietly accepting that it’s true, there’s a spy. Only James is shocked. That’s James, of course, that’s James all over. He’s never been able to understand betrayal. 

Remus thinks it’ll only be James that can’t understand why half the Order seem to think it’s him. Somehow it isn’t.

“It’s discrimination,” says Lily, firmly. She’s married James, now, and sits twisting the wedding ring around her finger, a nervous tic. “Just because of what you are, doesn’t mean you’re any less trustworthy than the rest of us.”  
“Of course not,” Peter nods. His face is paler than it used to be. He’s lost weight.

“I’d trust you with my life,” James says. James hasn’t ever looked this worried in his life, not about anything, not even when Sirius betrayed them.

“They’re a bastard,” Sirius adds. Only he doesn’t look much different, but then he’s always been on edge.

But Remus’ friends don’t know what he’s hiding. He tries to not to act differently. He tries to look the same as he always has - calmer than Sirius, more agitated than James, a different kind of awkward to Peter. But he suspects it’s no use, that his acting’s off. He’s acting suspiciously, almost certainly, because he’s meeting up with a Death Eater once a week. He’s hiding books on curse removal under his bed, and he’s making clandestine trips for potions ingredients and he’s going to crack under the strain of the secrets. He hasn’t hidden anything from his friends since he was twelve. And now he’s hiding this. With every passing week he pushes himself further into a mire of secrets and lies, and sooner or later, he’s going to get found out.

He can’t stop, either. Regulus doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

“It isn’t removable,” Remus says, sitting on the sofa in a hotel room in a downmarket part of Birmingham. It’s a Saturday night, and the sounds of fights and drunken men float in through the gap in the window that doesn’t close properly. The place is not the sort that much cares about who you are or what you’re doing. Remus is convinced there’s a hooker and her client in the room next door. But, while it isn’t the sort of place where anyone who had a choice in the matter would want to discuss the nature of a curse, it’s somewhere that they can without interruption.

“I think we knew that.” There’s a bed and a chair, but Regulus shares the sofa with Remus.

“Why are you so defeatist?”

“Because what I try to do doesn’t necessarily require me to live.”

Remus gets up. “Don’t be so fucking - so fucking maudlin.” He’s not always any better, but if you can’t be hypocrite when you’re in fear of death, when can you be?

“Don’t be so fucking naive. You think I can merely walk away from the Dark Lord?”

“No, but,” says Remus. “I think you can try.”

“And die for it. No, I think not.”

“A minute ago you were a walking to your death. Now you’re not.”

“I do not walk to my death by leaving. I plan other things.”

“Can’t you stop being fucking cryptic for two minutes?

Regulus gets up, too. He looks permanently out of place in Muggle clothing. Perhaps it’s the war, perhaps it’s his Mark, perhaps it’s just the clothing and the shitty, seedy location that makes him look lost and alone. His eyes have dark circles under them, and he’s skinnier than he was. Not that Remus is looking in that way. He might, but they haven’t mentioned that since Hogwarts. It doesn’t seem like the right time.

“I’m trying,” he says. “I don’t want it to be like this.”

He’s eighteen, Remus remembers. Remus forgets how young all of them are. He’s only nineteen himself, although every month since Hogwarts has felt like a year. They’re teenagers without a fucking clue, who shouldn’t be trying to remove Dark curses from one another and discussing their deaths.

“We should go to Dumbledore.” Remus says that every week.

“No.” Regulus says that every week, too, and they never get any further forward. “Remus,” he starts, and pauses, and turns to face the wall, so Remus is looking at his back as he listens. “I think it’s getting worse. I feel like I should kill. I want to kill people, and hurt them, I want to make everyone pay, but for what, I don’t know.”

“It’s the curse,” says Remus. “We read about this, don’t you remember? It wants the control, Voldemort wants the control.”

“It’s fighting back.”

“Yes. You have to fight it, Regulus. You’ve got to remember that you’re not what he wants you to be. You’ve got to fight, and we’ll keep trying to get it off, I’ve got another lead on a book, I think, and there’s a potion we still haven’t tried, and maybe if not Dumbledore, we could try someone else? There’s a woman in the Order, Dorcas, she’s good at Healing.”

It’s at this point that Remus realises that Regulus’ shoulders are shaking. Like Lily’s when she cries. Remus doesn’t know what to do, he’s never been any good at things like this. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he tries, except it isn’t, and they both know that. He walks up to Regulus, gingerly, like he’s about to explode into curses or something, and he puts an arm around the other man’s shoulder. “It might not be okay,” he adds, which is even less helpful. “We’re going to try.”

“It’s corrupting me. We read that this might happen.”

“You can fight it. I know you can.”

“And what if I can’t? What if it corrupts my soul?”

“It won’t. You’ll fight it. And we’ll kill Voldemort, we’ll end it, and it won’t have a hold on you any more.”

“And what then? What shall I do after this? I have the Mark, no matter what I tried to do to bring him down.”

“We’ll work it out.” Remus’ hand brushes Regulus’ cheek. And somehow, from there, their bodies press close to one another and their lips meet, and then it’s like Hogwarts was yesterday, and they’ve been doing this forever. It takes a minute, if not less, for each of them to find the buckles and zips and buttons of one another’s clothes, and perhaps ten seconds more than that for them to remember exactly how the other one likes to be touched. It isn’t thinking. 

—

Peter Pettigrew is still alive, that’s what Remus remembers when he returns to his own body in the cold dawn of the Forest. And Sirius Black isn’t a traitor. 

And Remus has put everyone in danger.

He turns over and vomits into the grass beside him, nasty hacking stuff that doesn’t look like he’s eaten any human, it looks normal, but what if he bit somebody? He’s going to run, he decides. There’s a segment of the wall to the ground in the Forest that’s falling down, has been for years, and he can get over that and he can run. There’s a Muggle village with a station fifty miles to the south. He’d be dangerous there, too, but he can use it to get to somewhere he’ll be out of everyone’s way.

This, of course, is a plan that only works if he’s in a fit state to run. Which he isn’t.

And, predictably, that Dementor shows up.

“I don’t have my wand,” he tells it. “Do what you like.”

It doesn’t. It hovers and it stares, because Dementors do have eyes, Remus can feel it watching him. It hovers and it stares and it doesn’t make him feel worse.

“Might as well,” he says to it. “I put everyone in danger.”

Someone will come through the Forest shortly, now it’s safe, and they’ll come and they’ll probably haul him to Azkaban. Because he didn’t tell anyone that Sirius is an Animagus. If he isn’t a werewolf. Remus should have raised the alarm properly, so he’s put Harry and Ron and Hermione into danger too. There should have been Ministry trained officials ready to catch Pettigrew, Dumbledore there, staff on hand to protect the students. Remus should have been curled up in his office, a safe, tame, captive wolf.

But Pettigrew’s escaped, Sirius is who knows where, and Harry and Ron and Hermione were in danger. Are they still? He tries to get up and run, but he can’t, and, anyway, it wouldn’t do any good.

He’s here, damp and cold and painful in the corner of the Forest, which is more than he deserves. With a Dementor. Which is probably exactly what he deserves. He doesn’t even have the heart to tell it to fuck off.

“Come with me,” he says. “We can run away together.”

The Dementor hisses. Maybe it sighs.

“Why not? I’m a Dark creature. You’re a Dark creature. You’re a chunk of corrupted soul, and I’m a dangerous beast. What could possibly go wrong?”

Remus needs pain relief, he decides. That’s why he’s chattering like this at a fucking Dementor, not a person, just a lump of conscious, corrupted soul. He’d thought he had a friend back, and look, here he is again, his best friend a Dementor. He should have had Sirius. He should have had Sirius and James and Lily, and Regulus too, but he’s got a Dementor and a traitor to kill. Peter. Peter was the traitor all along.

“Sirius Black was never the traitor,” he tells it. “All those memories your lot looked for, all the pain you brought back, it was for nothing. How does that make you feel?”

It hisses again, and approaches.

_“It’s corrupting me,” says Regulus Black. “I can feel it more every day.” It’s the last time Remus sees Regulus, this, and he doesn’t know it yet. “The pain - it’s like it’s trying to tear me apart. I think it’s in my soul.”_

__

__

_“It can’t be,” Remus says, and there’s something twisting in his gut. “It can’t be. I love you. Remember that.”_

Why that memory?

“ _Expecto Patronum!_ ” shouts a Scottish voice, and Minerva appears as the Dementor backs away. “Honestly, Remus, you really ought to have taken your potion,” she says. “I can’t do anything for most of that until we’re back in the castle, you know.”

“Best not to bother,” Remus says. He picks himself up. The Dementor lurks in the background, like it’s not willing to leave him alone. Rich pickings, he supposes that he is. An easy target. “I’ll be going to Azkaban anyway.”

“Nonsense.” Her face softens. “I don’t doubt you’ll have to leave Hogwarts, though. The students will know by lunchtime, and the owls will be pouring in by dinner. Infernal things. Albus won’t fire you, but the Board of Governors will try.”

“I’m resigning.”

“Much as I don’t want you to, that may be for the best. You’re the only competent Defence teacher most of the students have ever had.” She turns away from him. “What’s that Dementor still doing here? _Expecto Patronum!_ ”

Minerva’s cat chases the Dementor off into the Forest. Remus feels strangely more alone than he had before.

—

“It’s corrupting me,” says Regulus Black. “I can feel it more every day.” He walks up and down another hotel room, another anonymous place in an anonymous city. Remus has a list of all the placed they’ve been to. He can’t remember why. 

“Is it getting worse?” It’s the wrong thing to say. It’s too clinical, too much like he’s a Healer, not - what are they to each other?

“Yes.” Regulus sighs. “I think - it feels like it’s ripping at me. Tearing.” He’s short of breath, even though he’s walking slowly, like every step aches his bones. “It wants me gone.”

Remus doesn’t know what to say. Everything feels like the wrong thing.

“I don’t think I’ve got long left.”

“You have,” Remus says, and there’s something twisting in his gut. “You have. I love you. You have to live.”

“You do?”

They’ve never said that before. Why would they? They’re a Death Eater pureblood and an Order of the Phoenix werewolf, and love isn’t on the table. Except it is.

“Yes.”

“I love you too.”

They don’t do anything more than hold one another. Two men on a bed in an anonymous place, somewhere that won’t remember either of them when they’re gone, twisted in amongst each other as if this is their last day together. Whatever Remus says out loud, it could be their last, after all.

—

It isn’t Azkaban that’s Remus’ fate. It isn’t even a secure ward at St Mungo’s. It’s the polite, sad smile of Albus Dumbledore as he accepts Remus’ resignation.

“It’s regrettable it ever came to this,” says Albus, and, beside him, Minerva nods. She’s insisted on coming for moral support, and Remus finds that he’s grateful. “You were exemplary as a teacher.”

“Thank you,” says Remus. What else is he supposed to say? Albus promises him a good reference, and Remus thanks him again, even though a reference is useless and they all know that. 

He packs his trunk, and talks to Harry, and he talks to Hermione and Ron, too, who all come in separately. Those three he expected. Less so Lee Jordan, the Weasley twins, Miss Johnson, Warrington from Slytherin, Luna Lovegood from Ravenclaw, an entire posse of Hufflepuffs, and a steady trail of other students.

“I didn’t want my parents to write to Dumbledore,” says Warrington, awkward in the doorway. “I liked your teaching. You were fair.”

“People are idiots, sir,” says Lee Jordan. “Me and George and Fred want to give you this.” They hand over something that, if he were staying on, Remus would almost certainly have to confiscate. As their soon not-teacher, he can appreciate it for a fine work of spellcasting, and he can avoid having to take points for the language they use in talking about the governors. 

“Really,” says Luna Lovegood, who Remus never got the measure of, “it’s the Nargles they ought to be worrying about, not you.” He thinks that’s a compliment. 

—

The next week, Regulus Black doesn’t turn up for their meeting. Remus waits. He goes the next week, too, in case Regulus was held up. He knows Regulus is gone. Remus waits for two hours in the cold, and then he goes and almost gets himself blown up in the service of the Order.

The day after that, Sirius gets the letter. It’s a short, terse note from his mother, asking if he would consider coming home now that Regulus is dead. Sirius explodes it with his wand. Remus is almost blown up for the second time in as many days in the crossfire. He puts out the fire that is the sofa, and Peter does the armchair, and James, who isn’t holding his wand, wrestles Sirius to the ground to remove his wand from him. They sit there as Sirius doesn’t cry, and Sirius always cries.

And then Sirius derails, and it’s all any of them can do to stop him from making it worse. It’s public and it’s messy, it’s running into danger and it’s creating danger when there wasn’t any, and it’s all the rest of them can do to keep him here, with them, while they wait for him to work it out.

Remus regrets the day he ever spoke to Regulus Black. That’s all he’s allowed to do. No public breakdown for him.

—

“Severus, can I have a word?” Remus asks, lurking on the edge of Snape’s dungeon classroom. It’s the last place he wants to be, aside from Azkaban, and despite Albus and Minerva’s reassurances, he hasn’t ruled that out as an option. But, somehow, Snape is the person that might have the answers Remus needs.

“Why?” asks Snape, and it’s slightly politer than Remus expects.

“It isn’t about you having outed me as a werewolf,” he says, trying to be pleasant. “I don’t hold a grudge over that.”

Snape raises an eyebrow. “Of course not.”

“Genuinely. The students would have found out somehow. You can argue that it’s a case of the sooner, the better.”

Snape says nothing. Remus enters the classroom, because nobody’s explicitly said he can’t. He takes a seat on one of the desks, and, despite the fact that he has been - was - a teacher here for a year, once again feels slightly like he’s a student in detention.

“I’d thank you not to sit on my desks.”

“I apologise for your apparent lack of an Order of Merlin, too,” Remus says. “I’m not sure you deserved to have that taken away.”

“Get to the point, Lupin. I’ve got better things to do than socialise with a disgraced werewolf.”

“Haven’t we all?” It probably is better to get to the point. Whether he wants to leave Hogwarts on a civil note with Snape or not (he doesn’t care either way, honestly), he still wants his information. “I’ve got a couple of questions for you. Research, if you will.”

Snape looks as if he wants to ask what on earth a soon-to-be-unemployed werewolf could need to research, but he doesn’t. Remus already has an excuse for the question, anyway.

“When you began to spy for Dumbledore,” Remus begins, and Snape hisses, “did you notice any changes to your Dark Mark?”

“That,” says Snape, gripping the back of a chair and speaking in that short, sharp voice, “is none of your business.”

“Oh, I know,” says Remus. “And if it were down to me, I wouldn’t ask. But with the recent events, I know Dumbledore’s concerned about a possible return of You-Know-Who. He’s asked me to find out what I can.” Which is somewhat stretching the truth. Dumbledore’s asked him to find out what he can explicitly relating to Pettigrew and his links to Voldemort, but it’s proven that Pettigrew had the Mark, so this is somewhat linked. Linked enough to be able to claim to Snape and Dumbledore that he’d thought he was doing what he’d been asked, even if neither of them might believe him for entirely different reasons.

It’s just by-the-by that this is, really, for something entirely unrelated.

Snape glares. For a moment Remus thinks he isn’t going to answer, as he turns and goes into the store cupboard in the corner of the room, which is half emptied onto the floor around it, a stock-take now term is over for the students. He comes out with two small glass bottles, and roughly shoves them onto the desk next to Remus.

“It was more painful,” he says. “This is the strongest pain serum I know how to make. It was necessary for the pain. At first I believed that to be coincidence. The Mark inflicted pain when he wished it top, or when he was exceptionally angry. And he was angry much of the time, then. Others complained of pain. It was several months before I connected the significance of the pain to the act of my betrayal.”

“And did it change in nature? Or were there compulsions?”

“Yes. It pained me more when I was directly acting against the Dark Lord. I do not believe that he would be aware of my action, else the punishment would likely have been death, but the magic within the Mark did. And it changed in it’s appearance. If I had given Dumbledore important information, I would not be able to allow it to be seen. I had to do things that the Dark Lord would approve of in order to return it to it’s proper appearance.” Snape pauses, realises what he’s saying. “And this helps Dumbledore how?”

“I’m trying to work out if there’s anything that could help us find Pettigrew, or anything that might make him want to return to Voldemort. I’m not sure how he’d know where to find him.”

“We know where he is,” says Snape. “He is alive. The Dark Lord will not be found unless he wants to be, so I cannot journey to his location with a contingent of Aurors and have him find them. But Peter Pettigrew certainly could. If Voldemort wished to receive him.”

“Do you think that he will?”

“Certainly. I don’t think Pettigrew will necessarily last longer than a week, but I’m sure the Dark Lord will have a use for him.”

“He’d find it hard to kill without a body.”

“He would not. The magic in this,” Snape begins pacing the room, flourishing his left arm to demonstrate what he means by ‘this’, “would allow him to kill us if he wished through the force of the magic. The Dark Lord made sure to make us aware of this. Or possibly to do worse. I did not ever wish to test it that far. It’s truly a remarkable creation of magic, and almost certainly something he invented himself. I looked, and I couldn’t find any books that dealt with something similar.”

No, Remus never had, either.

“Thank you, Severus,” he says, having heard enough. “I’m sure that we’ll see each other soon enough. Perhaps at the Feast?”

Snape mutters something that sounds suspiciously like he hopes he never sees Remus again. Remus doesn’t care. The conversation went better than he’d expected by far.

—

Nobody knows how Regulus Black died. Rumours, there’s thousands of those, including that he was taken by Inferi, but there’s no solid facts. The letter Sirius had from his parents states that he’s dead, and that he’s welcome at the funeral if he wishes to return to the family. Sirius burnt it, anyway, so it’s a dead end as far as Remus is concerned. 

He attends the funeral under James’ Invisibility Cloak. Nobody mentions a cause of death. It’s a tiny gathering, really, with Walburga Black wailing into her handkerchief and Orion Black stoic and pale, leaning on a walking stick. There’s Death Eaters, but not as many as you’d expect, just Lucius Malfoy and his wife, Bellatrix Lestrange and the Lestrange brothers, and a small clutch of others. Remus’ wand itches to curse them. He can’t. And nobody mentions how he died.

They say he’s a loss to the wizarding world. Whatever else the celebrant says is drowned out by Walburga’s sobbing. He was an exceptional wizard, that’s the only other thing Remus hears.

And he was.

Remus tries to think about this logically, but he’s on his own now. He can’t tell Sirius, and he can’t tell James or Peter without telling Sirius, and he can’t tell Lily without telling James. There’s still a traitor in the Order, and the circles of trust grow ever smaller. Remus thinks about telling Dumbledore. But what would be the point now? He can’t save Regulus. 

Logically, if Voldemort had found out what Regulus was doing, if he’d killed him for traitory, there wouldn’t have been Death Eaters at the funeral. But what if they hadn’t been told? But of course they’d have been told. Voldemort likes to make an example of his follower’s failures. But unless it had shown Voldemort’s own weaknesses?

Remus goes around in circles. He writes lists of potential things that could have happened. He burns them. He begins researching everything he can find, on curses and souls and what could have gone on with his Dark Mark, and reading the papers furiously for anything that could give him a clue. He lays on his bed and tries to pretend none of this ever happened. James sits him down for a chat about sorting his head out.

“What’s got into you?” James asks. “I know what’s wrong with Sirius, but…” James shakes his head. And Remus can’t admit it’s the same damn thing.

“It’s just all shit,” says Remus. “Yeah. It’s all shit.”

Because Regulus Black is gone. However he died, he’s gone. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Remus ever knows how or why or where. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Regulus died in vain. Maybe Remus just has to survive this himself, and try to win it for him.


	8. Epilogue

It’s time to leave Hogwarts. The students are trailing down to the train, or dashing around the castle retrieving owls and books and highly forbidden contraband from whatever they’ve lost them, and then there’s silence. If Remus still had the map, he’d see teachers walking down to Hogsmeade to leave for the summer, perhaps, Minerva in her office, Albus in his, Filch doing whatever strange things he does in his spare time. 

Remus doesn’t like the silence.

All the Dementors have left the castle, gone with Fudge, so Minerva says, the day that Sirius escaped. There’s no slow demise of his happiness as he walks down the path to the gates. He’s leaving Hogwarts for the very last time, there’s no way back for him now. This isn’t happiness to begin with, anyway.

In his pocket is a note, delivered by owl the day before, just a time and a date in Sirius’ scrawl. A second, in his trunk, with a set of map coordinates, had arrived the day before. In three days, he’s going to meet Sirius, properly, and they’re going to talk about the last twelve years, and they’re going to talk about October 1981. Remus doesn’t really drink, but he suspects they’re going to need something for this one. 

Remus doesn’t look up at the castle as he walks out the gates. There’s one less ghost, yes, because Peter’s alive and a traitor and Remus is going to kill him for what he did, but this, this discovery and this getting Sirius back, it’s opened a whole new can of worms. The castle just looms behind him as he walks away, resigned in disgrace, the werewolf professor that should never have been there in the first place.

There’s going to be another war. They all agree on that. Albus is making plans, and Remus is back to digging around in corners, trying to find out any information that might help. He supposes he can help more, if he isn’t teaching. It might seem like a consolation in the future. 

He’s halfway down the path to Hogsmeade, out of the castle for the last time ever, probably, when he catches sight of something between the trees. He draws his wand. When nothing moves, or appears, or makes any noise, Remus exits the path and cuts down in between the trees, his wand still out. It could be Sirius. It’d be bloody irresponsible of him for it to be Sirius, but that doesn’t rule anything out. Remus decides not to think of worst case scenarios. 

“What’s there?” he shouts. “Show yourself!”

Nothing moves, not even an animal making an escape, and so Remus knows what this is. He should have got it sooner, of course.

He’s right. 

The Dementor floats, as usual, the standard foot off the ground, and it’s cloak sways as usual, even though there still isn’t any wind to blow it. Some things don’t change. Sirius Black isn’t a traitor, Pettigrew is, but James Potter is still dead and there’s still a spectre in Remus’ life. And he knows what’s going on, now. He knows why this Dementor’s always there, he knows why it’s pulling out certain memories, and he knows what happened all those years ago.

“Hello,” he says. “I know who you are.”

The Dementor rustles it’s cloak, and hisses.

“I love you,” he says. “No matter how corrupted you became.”


End file.
